Jasmine’s grandfather teaches her Chinese calligraphy by drawing and making up stories together. This book includes information about Chinese characters and a glossary of words in the story.
China
Materials from China
Shanghai Girls: A Novel
In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great wealth and glamour, the home of millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father’s prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Though both sisters wave off authority and tradition, they couldn’t be more different: Pearl is a Dragon sign, strong and stubborn, while May is a true Sheep, adorable and placid. Both are beautiful, modern, and carefree . . . until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides. As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime, one that will take them through the Chinese countryside, in and out of the clutch of brutal soldiers, and across the Pacific to the shores of America. In Los Angeles they begin a fresh chapter, trying to find love with the strangers they have married, brushing against the seduction of Hollywood, and striving to embrace American life even as they fight against discrimination, brave Communist witch hunts, and find themselves hemmed in by Chinatown’s old ways and rules. At its heart, Shanghai Girls is a story of sisters: Pearl and May are inseparable best friends who share hopes, dreams, and a deep connection, but like sisters everywhere they also harbor petty jealousies and rivalries. They love each other, but each knows exactly where to drive the knife to hurt the other the most. Along the way they face terrible sacrifices, make impossible choices, and confront a devastating, life-changing secret, but through it all the two heroines of this novel hold fast to who they are–Shanghai girls.
The Painted Wall And Other Strange Tales (Aesop Accolades (Awards))
Honor Book for the Society of School Librarians International’s Best Book Award – Language Arts, Grades K-6 Novels. Selected as one of four recipients of the 2004 Aesop Accolade. Selected by the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association as one of the PSLA YA Top Forty Fiction Titles 2003. At about the time the Grimm Brothers were gathering their famous collection of folk stories and fairy tales in Europe, in China a similar collection of almost five hundred stories had just been compiled by the scholar Pu Sing-ling. Drawing on oral and written sources, he called his collection of the strange and wondrous Strange Tales from a Studio of Leisure. The fruits of his life’s work become immensely popular with storytellers who performed the stories in teahouses, where rapt audiences would sit for half a day drinking tea and listening to tales of ghosts, fox fairies, and other wonders. Almost unknown in the West, the stories are given new life in this important work by the masterful Michael Bedard.
Tulku
An attack in the dark, screams, burning huts…
Thirteen-year-old Theodore crouches under the trees. His father’s Mission has been destroyed. His father is dead. Theodore is on his own, fleeing the Chinese rebels of the Boxer uprising.
Then Mrs Jones appears. A botanist, Mrs Jones is a feisty, aging, good-hearted woman who has an amazing (and eye-opening) vocabulary and who adopts Theodore into her band of travellers. Fleeing bandits, the group enters Tibet, where they meet the old Lama who rules a monastery. But when the Lama says they have been drawn to him by destiny, and insists that Theodore, Mrs Jones, and her young Chinese courier Lung hold the clue to the birth of the long-awaited Tulku, or reincarnated spiritual master, there seems to be no escape…
Along The River
Bestselling Chinese American author Adeline Yen Mah weaves her authentic accounts of life in China into an absorbing novel about a Chinese girl and her vision of a previous life. After a fall, CC is whisked away to a hospital. As she drifts in and out of consciousness, she is haunted by vivid dreams that seem strange-yet somehow familiar. Thus begins CC’s emotional journey back to a privileged life lived eight hundred years ago during the Song dynasty. CC is the daughter of a wealthy and influential man, but she finds herself drawn to a poor orphan boy with a startling ability to capture the beauty of the natural world. As the relationship between these two young people deepens, the transforming power of art and romantic love comes into conflict with the immovable rules of Chinese society. This stunning fantasy adventure novel, inspired by Chinars”s most famous painting, Along the River at the Qing Ming Festival, tells the story of a friendship both tender and bold. CC’s remarkable journey reminds readers that though time moves on, art and love endure. From the Hardcover edition.
The Magical Starfruit Tree: A Chinese Folktale
A stingy peddler is chastised for his miserly ways by an old beggar with magical powers.
The Waiting Day
In ancient China, a hardworking ferryman who tries to please his demanding and unappreciative passengers learns an important lesson from a beggar sitting patiently by the riverbank.
Ten Suns: A Chinese Legend
When the ten sons of Di Jun walk across the sky together causing the earth to burn from the blazing heat, their father looks for a way to stop the destruction.
The Moon Maiden And Other Asian Folktales
Twelve folktales of China & East Asia come alive in this brightly illustrated children’s book. A great addition to world folktale collections.
The Ancient Chinese (Look Into The Past)
Looks at the history and culture of ancient China, and discusses agriculture, city life, families, leisure pastimes, beliefs, education, trade, and industry.