https://www.scmp.com/rss/327196/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Rent a Boyfriend by Gloria Chao, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers Holidays can be extremely stressful, especially for singles returning home to visit their parents. In China and other Asian countries, some women resort to hiring partners during the Lunar New Year to appease concerned parents. Gloria Chao, an American author known for her examination of intergenerational culture clashes, centres her third young adult novel, Rent a Boyfriend, on this concept. In Chao’s latest book, Chloe... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3113601/rent-boyfriend-gloria-chao-fun-and-flirty-asian?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3113601/rent-boyfriend-gloria-chao-fun-and-flirty-asian?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 14 Dec 2020 06:15:17 +0000 Slow Train to Democracy: Memoirs of Life in Shanghai, 1978 to 1979, by Anne E. McLaren, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 4 stars Amid the plethora of China memoirs by Western writers over the years, Anne E. McLaren’s book set in Shanghai from 1978 to 1979 stands out because it takes place during a time of transition in China. But Slow Train to Democracy is more than just a record of McLaren’s time in China or the transition. It’s an account of a little-known democracy movement in Shanghai –... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3093401/democracy-movement-china-1978-1979-recalled-memoir-foreign?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3093401/democracy-movement-china-1978-1979-recalled-memoir-foreign?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 19 Jul 2020 06:45:05 +0000 Strangers on the Praia: A Tale of Refugees and Resistance in Wartime Macau, by Paul French. Published by Blacksmith Books. 4/5 stars While World War II may have ended more than 70 years ago, new stories from that era continue to emerge even now. Paul French’s new book, Strangers on the Praia: A Tale of Refugees and Resistance in Wartime Macau, tells the little-known history of Jewish refugees in Shanghai who fled to the neutral Portuguese enclave of Macau. Strangers on the Praia began life as a... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3090554/why-jewish-refugees-world-war-ii-fled-safety-shanghai-macau?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3090554/why-jewish-refugees-world-war-ii-fled-safety-shanghai-macau?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Jun 2020 04:00:12 +0000 Climbing the Seven Volcanoes: A Search for Strength, by Sophie Cairns, Amberley, 4 stars When Sophie Cairns’ parents announced that the family was leaving Hong Kong, where she was born and raised, she vowed to return. A teenager, biracial and fluent in Cantonese, she never felt like she belonged in the UK, and longed for the Hong Kong of her childhood. Cairns later joined the South China Morning Post as a reporter and was working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Shanghai, China, when... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3081709/grief-and-guilt-led-ex-hongkonger-start-climbing-mountains?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3081709/grief-and-guilt-led-ex-hongkonger-start-climbing-mountains?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 27 Apr 2020 10:00:10 +0000 The Lotus Eaters, by Emily Clements, Hardie Grant, 4 stars When Emily Clements finds herself alone in Vietnam after her best friend suddenly departs for Australia, she tries to make the best of her opportunity to see Southeast Asia. Only 19, Clements quickly picks up the language and goes out of her way to meet Hanoians. This memoir of her year in Vietnam is not, however, a typical expat book about immersing oneself in another culture. Instead, it centres on the way women are conditioned to put... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3074424/how-white-womans-memoir-abuse-while-travelling-asia-became?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3074424/how-white-womans-memoir-abuse-while-travelling-asia-became?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 11 Mar 2020 10:00:05 +0000 Loveboat, Taipei, by Abigail Hing Wen. Published by HarperTeen. 4/5 stars When Abigail Hing Wen was a teenager in Ohio, she spent a summer in Taiwan getting in touch with her Chinese roots. The programme, funded by the Taiwanese government, was dubbed the “love boat”, even though it had nothing to do with ships or the sea. The “love boat” programme began in the late 1960s to provide North American Chinese teens with a cultural experience in the old country. The nickname – a reference to an... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3045855/chinese-american-teens-explore-their-cultural-ties-taiwan?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3045855/chinese-american-teens-explore-their-cultural-ties-taiwan?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 13 Jan 2020 08:45:07 +0000 Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale, Adam Minter, Bloomsbury, 4/5 stars Globalisation usually means manufacturing. But globalisation reaches into other realms, even waste disposal, as Adam Minter wrote in his debut book, Junkyard Planet. In his new book, Secondhand, Minter investigates what happens to material goods we donate after we’re done using them. He travels throughout North America, Asia and Africa to explore how different countries reuse discarded items. It turns out that... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3035350/second-hand-book-shows-how-donated-and-discarded-items-are?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3035350/second-hand-book-shows-how-donated-and-discarded-items-are?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 29 Oct 2019 17:00:10 +0000 In the late 1970s and early 1980s, two Jewish cartoonists brought the term “graphic novel” to the mainstream. Will Eisner’s A Contract With God tells the story of poor Jewish immigrants in New York tenements, while Art Spiegelman’s Maus depicts two storylines that centre around the Holocaust. These books address heavy subjects and differ from the lighter fare in comic books, which are usually thinner, magazine-like publications. The term graphic novel has come to refer to non-fiction, not just... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3024118/how-i-learned-dark-meant-ugly-asian-americans-graphic-novels?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3024118/how-i-learned-dark-meant-ugly-asian-americans-graphic-novels?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 26 Aug 2019 14:00:11 +0000 The Promise: Love and Loss in Modern China, by Xinran Xue (trans. by William Spence), Bloomsbury, 4/5 stars Author and journalist Xinran has written a number of non-fiction books about women in contemporary China, but in her latest book she goes back in time to examine the changes in love and marriage since the Republican era. Murder in Peking – two hot takes on a grisly 1937 cold case Much has been written about political, social, and economic changes in China since before the 1949 communist... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/2187573/how-sex-and-love-china-has-changed-sexless-arranged-marriages?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/2187573/how-sex-and-love-china-has-changed-sexless-arranged-marriages?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 26 Feb 2019 10:31:58 +0000 A River of Stars by Vanessa Hua Ballantine Books 3.5 stars In the early 1990s, a new area of Shenzhen, the city in China that borders Hong Kong, sprang up almost overnight and soon was known as the “second wives’ village”. At that time, businessmen from Hong Kong had started to work over the border as manufacturing moved from industrial areas of Kowloon to the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. They would spend the week working in southern China, returning to their families at the weekend. Factory... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2166623/struggles-hongkongers-chinese-second-wife-us-realistically-portrayed?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2166623/struggles-hongkongers-chinese-second-wife-us-realistically-portrayed?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 02 Oct 2018 13:00:45 +0000 Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown by Lauren Hilgers Penguin RandomHouse 3.5 stars Immigration reform is a hot topic – particularly in the United States – but regardless of one’s position, it is surely in everyone’s best interests that immigrants succeed in their new homes. And one of the most effective paths to success is having a solid support system – such as a family – in a new land. Lauren Hilgers’s recently published book, Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown,... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2147611/china-land-protest-leaders-pursuit-american-dream-textbook-story?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2147611/china-land-protest-leaders-pursuit-american-dream-textbook-story?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 24 May 2018 13:15:30 +0000