A dazzling cycle of short stories by one of China’s most revered contemporary writers and one of the world’s leading artist-intellectuals.An Empty Room is the first book by the celebrated Chinese writer Mu Xin to appear in English. A cycle of thirteen tenderly evocative stories written while Mu Xin was living in exile, this collection is reminiscent of the structural beauty of Hemingway’s In Our Time and the imagistic power of Kawabata’s palm-of-t...

In the tradition of The Concubine's Children and Paper Shadows, a probing memoir from the author of the acclaimed novel Midnight at the Dragon Cafe.An elegant and surprising book about a Chinese family's difficult arrival in Canada, and a daughter's search to understand remarkable and terrible truths about her parents' past lives.Growing up in her father's hand laundry in small town Ontario, Judy Fong Bates listened to stories of ...

A rich and imaginative discovery of how ink has shaped culture and why it is here to stayInk is so much a part of daily life that we take it for granted, yet its invention was as significant as the wheel. Ink not only recorded culture, it bought political power, divided peoples, and led to murderous rivalries. Ancient letters on a page were revered as divine light, and precious ink recipes were held secret for centuries. And, when it first hit markets not so long a...

A short story by the Edgar-, Shamus-, and Anthony-winning author of GHOST HERO. In "Chin Yong-Yun Takes a Case," Lydia Chin's mother does some detecting of her own.

Far from home, a fractured community of Yugoslav outcasts struggle with their lives in award–winning author Dubravka Ugrešić's novel The Ministry of Pain.Having fled the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic is now a professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she teaches a class filled with other young Yugoslav exiles, most of whom earn meager wages assembling leather and rubber S&M clothing at a sweatshop they call the "Ministry."

Unmatched in scope and literary quality, this landmark anthology spans three thousand years, bringing together more than six hundred poems by more than one hundred thirty poets, in translations–many new and exclusive to the book–by an array of distinguished translators.Here is the grand sweep of Chinese poetry, from the Book of Songs–ancient folk songs said to have been collected by Confucius himself–and Laozi’s Dao De Jingto the vividly pictorial ...

Learn the secrets of Shaolin Temple boxing also known as Shaolin Kung Fu with this illustrated matrtial arts guide.Shaolin Temple boxing is the father of all boxing forms in China and is a close ancestor of Japanese karate. Despite the widespread study of Shaolin kung fu, however, the true origins and history of this exciting martial art have been obscured by wildly fanciful myths and legends that have arisen over the centuries, leading martial-arts authority Rober...

ONE OF THE FOREMOST WORKS OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHINESE LITERATUREThis beautifully portrayed epic family history spans one hundred years, from the 1890s during the later stages of the Qing Dynasty to the 1990s, traversing the experiences of five generations of women. Yu is the central character, whose life story is woven through the lives of her grandmother, mother, sisters, and niece. She loves her parents but at a tender age realizes they do not love her. After co...

In this powerful, touching memoir of a critically acclaimed Chinese-American writer, taste becomes the keeper of memory and food the keeper of culture when Nai-nai, her extraordinary grandmother, arrives from mainland China.Leslie Li’s paternal grandfather, Li Zogren, was China’s first democratically elected vice president, to whom Chiang Kai-shek left control of the country when he fled to Formosa in 1949. Nine years later, Li’s wife, Nai-nai, comes to live with her son’s family i...

Two thousand years ago, Japan and Korea began a long-standing history of cultural contact. For the Koreans, this meant an invasion in the 1590s spawning four centuries of bitter contempt for Japanese society. The Japanese, however, were culturally enriched, gathering as spoils of war the traditions of Buddhism, elements of Chinese writing, and most valued of all, the removal of master potters from their Korean captives.In Japanese Satsuma Pottery, delight in "a tale of two cultures...

Du Fu (712–770) is one of the undisputed geniuses of Chinese poetry—still universally admired and read thirteen centuries after his death. Now David Young, author of Black Lab, and well known as a translator of Chinese poets, gives us a sparkling new translation of Du Fu’s verse, arranged to give us a tour of the life, each “chapter” of poems preceded by an introductory paragraph that situates us in place, time, and circumstance. What emerges is a portrait of a modest yet great ar...

Ahmam is a modern day woman living in Taipei, Taiwan. She is preparing to return home to her village for the Chinese New Year. As she prepares for what is normally thought to be a festive time for Chinese families fills Ahmam with dread. She is going home a disappointment to her overly critical mother. She is jobless, penniless and more importantly single, with no marriage prospects in sight. What Ahmam does have is a strength of spirit which stems from the cloister of friends that surroun...