Books like A many-splendoured thing by Han Suyin

Set during the French Indochina War, the novel follows British journalist Thomas Fowler, his mistress Phuong, and American idealist Pyle, whose ambitions and tragic fate reshape their lives amid political turmoil.

The Woman Warrior is Maxine Hong Kingston’s lyrical memoir of her Chinese‑American upbringing in California, juxtaposing her mother’s folk tales of fierce women with the everyday sexism she faces.

In the backdrop of Mao's Cultural Revolution, two boys discover a stash of 19th‑century Western novels, reshaping their worldviews and opening a bridge between East and West.

Route 312 is the Chinese Route 66. It flows three thousand miles from east to west, passing through the factory towns of the coastal areas, through the rural heart of China, then up into the Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road. The highway witnesses every part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China upside down.In this utterly surprising and deeply personal book, acclaimed National Public Radio reporter Rob Gifford, a fluent Mandarin speaker, takes the dramatic journey along Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its end on the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford reveals the rich mosaic of modern Chinese life in all its contradictions, as he poses the crucial questions that all of us are asking about China: Will it really be the next global superpower? Is it as solid and as powerful as it looks from the outside? And who are the ordinary Chinese people, to whom the twenty-first century is supposed to belong? Gifford is not alone on his journey. The largest migration in human history is taking place along highways such as Route 312, as tens of millions of people leave their homes in search of work. He sees signs of the booming urban economy everywhere, but he also uncovers many of the country's frailties, and some of the deep-seated problems that could derail China's rise. The whole compelling adventure is told through the cast of colorful characters Gifford meets: garrulous talk-show hosts and ambitious yuppies, impoverished peasants and tragic prostitutes, cell-phone salesmen, AIDS patients, and Tibetan monks. He rides with members of a Shanghai jeep club, hitchhikes across the Gobi desert, and sings karaoke with migrant workers at truck stops along the way.As he recounts his travels along Route 312, Rob Gifford gives a face to what has historically, for Westerners, been a faceless country and breathes life into a nation that is so often reduced to economic statistics. Finally, he sounds a warning that all is not well in the Chinese heartlands, that serious problems lie ahead, and that the future of the West has become inextricably linked with the fate of 1.3 billion Chinese people."Informative, delightful, and powerfully moving . . . Rob Gifford's acute powers of observation, his sense of humor and adventure, and his determination to explore the wrenching dilemmas of China's explosive development open readers' eyes and reward their minds." --Robert A. Kapp, president, U.S.-China Business Council, 1994-2004From the Hardcover edition.

A Chinese mother and her adopted daughter, raised by an American couple, discover how a rare native tea links their worlds and transforms their family's destiny across cultures.

Mark Elliot, a married British foreign correspondent in Hong Kong, falls in love with a Eurasian doctor from Mainland China, confronting family prejudice and societal biases while illuminating the complex history of Hong Kong and its people.

Zhou Enlai was one of the greatest statesmen of the twentieth century. Long overshadowed by the more visible - and charismatic - Mao Dzedong, he and his life and extraordinary accomplishments remain little recognized outside China, where he is still revered as the beloved father of the modern nation. In Eldest Son, Han Suyin brings this towering figure to life in a profoundly human and intimate portrait - the first full-scale biography of the late premier to be published in English. Between 1956 and 1974, Dr. Han conducted a series of eleven unprecedented interviews with Zhou, each of them lasting for several hours. Drawing upon these encounters, and on further meetings with his widow, his family and colleagues, as well as her unusual access to the Communist Party archives, Dr. Han presents a nuanced portrait of this deeply committed Chinese nationalist and Communist. Here is the full sweep of Zhou's remarkable life: his early schooling in Japan and Europe, his complex and loyal relationship to Mao, his historic meetings with other world leaders such as Khrushchev, Nehru, and Nixon which opened China to the global community. And Dr. Han gives us the private man as well as the public figure: his loving and formative marriage to Deng Yingchao, the murder of his adopted daughter at the hands of the Red Guards, and ultimately his painful battle with cancer . Like no other, Zhou's life is the history of modern China. Through the lens of his experience we see unfolding the dramatic, sometimes violent, decades of change: the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the galvanizing Long March, the social convulsions of the Great Leap Forward, the violent excesses of the Cultural Revolution, and the diplomatic rapprochement with the West in the 1970s. Dr. Han weaves these decisive events with the impressions and memories of hundreds of ordinary citizens from every sector of Chinese society to create a rich historical tapestry. Compellingly written, unique in its perspective, Eldest Son is masterful social history and an indispensable portrait of a legendary leader whose political legacy continues to influence the course of China today.

A large type book of English fiction by Mervyn Jones.

An unlikely American soldier becomes the hero in this thrilling World War II story of sniper skills and survival.