Results tagged “bookreview”

Clocking in at only 99 pages, Shanghai: High Lights Low Lights Tael Lights is an excellent appetizer for those of us who generally dine on heavier reading fare. The authors, Maurine Karns and Pat Patterson, make their purpose known early in the book: in the preface, titled “an explanation but not an apology,” Karns and Patterson state that they have written Tael Lights “with the hope of enjoying ourselves, of making a little money, and of not committing ourselves to anything for which we might be sorry” (xx). They proceed to describe, with delightful if decidedly un-PC irreverence, the Shanghai they saw before them when writing the book in 1936.

People who looked at this cover and thought that it would be an insightful and sexy look into being a foreigner touring through a China just newly opened to the world will ultimately be disappointed.

Here, Shanghai, were your favourite stories for the month of January:

We're sure her London-based publisher is happy to hear this. Zhou Wei Hui, author of banned-by-Beijing Shanghai Baby, admits that she self-censored her latest book Marrying Buddha (Shanghaiist review) because the Chinese government let her back in the country.