Synopses & Reviews
Fiction. Asian Studies. Take a wild ride through contemporary Chinese society, which continues to accelerate at a blistering, unrestrained pace decades after the end of the Cultural Revolution. RED GUARD FANTASIES AND OTHER STORIES forces a reconciliation between China's new urban sensibility and its centuries of tradition, and the results are certainly not predictable. Shouhua Qi's stories are witty, poignant, absurd, and shocking. Part autobiographical, they offer a masterful depiction of the myriad world of jaded entrepreneurs, overzealous cops, karaoke addicts, dog lovers, liberated co-eds, and frustrated urbanites who move in and out of China's colorful neon-lit cities and dusty rural villages; transitioning from one world to the other. Here is a China that is both superficial and plastic as well as profoundly righteous and moralistic. More than anything, RED GUARD FANTASIES is a deeply personal and powerfully moving elegy for China's lost generation.s new urban sensibility and its centuries of tradition, and the results are certainly not predictable. Shouhua Qi's stories are witty, poignant, absurd, and shocking. Part autobiographical, they offer a masterful depiction of the myriad world of jaded entrepreneurs, overzealous cops, karaoke addicts, dog lovers, liberated co-eds, and frustrated urbanites who move in and out of China's colorful neon-lit cities and dusty rural villages; transitioning from one world to the other. Here is a China that is both superficial and plastic as well as profoundly righteous and moralistic. More than anything, RED GUARD FANTASIES is a deeply personal and powerfully moving elegy for China's lost generation.
Synopsis
A visit to the "Twilight Zone" of China, where morality plays challenge tradition and modernity.
Synopsis
Fiction. Asian Studies. In this collection of stories Shouhua Qi shows a China that is both superficial and plastic as well as profoundly righteous and moralistic. This is a work which offers a powerful look at a society hanging on for dear life as it continues to shape its own culture at breakneck speed while holding on to its traditions lest they be buried or a skyscraper built upon them. More than anything, RED GUARD FANTASIES is a deeply personal and powerfully moving elegy for China's lost generation. "Shouhua Qi's stories of post-Cultural Revolution China gloriously join the lineage of Chekhov. With unadorned prose and utmost compassion, Qi portrays a range of characters beset by fortune and misfortune. Here is China shocked in the 21st century. Big screen TVs, cell phones, hair mousse, condos, poodles, gated communities, colorful dresses, and AIDS coexist with broken Buddhas, ancient libations, ghosts, past lives and Confucian relics resurfaced after decades of frenzied banishment. RED GUARD FANTASIES offer glimpses of How to Be Chinese, now that instructions from the Little Red Book no longer apply"-Gloria Frym.
About the Author
Shouhua Qi is Associate Professor of English at Western Connecticut State University. A specialist in translating the novels of Thomas Hardy, he came to the U.S. as a graduate student in 1989 and received his Ph.D. in English from Illinois State University. His writings have appeared in "Feminist Studies" and "AMBIT."