The Porcelain Thief: Searching the Middle Kingdom for Buried China
(OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, OverDrive Listen)
A journalist travels throughout mainland China and Taiwan in search of his family’s hidden treasure and comes to understand his ancestry as he never has before.
In 1938, when the Japanese arrived in Huan Hsu’s great-great-grandfather Liu’s Yangtze River hometown of Xingang, Liu was forced to bury his valuables, including a vast collection of prized antique porcelain, and undertake a decades-long trek that would splinter the family over thousands of miles. Many years and upheavals later, Hsu, raised in Salt Lake City and armed only with curiosity, moves to China to work in his uncle’s semiconductor chip business. Once there, a conversation with his grandmother, his last living link to dynastic China, ignites a desire to learn more about not only his lost ancestral heirlooms but also porcelain itself. Mastering the language enough to venture into the countryside, Hsu sets out to separate the layers of fact and fiction that have obscured both China and his heritage and finally complete his family’s long march back home.
Melding memoir, travelogue, and social and political history, The Porcelain Thief offers an intimate and unforgettable way to understand the complicated events that have defined China over the past two hundred years and provides a revealing, lively perspective on contemporary Chinese society from the point of view of a Chinese American coming to terms with his hyphenated identity.
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Huan Hsu. (2015). The Porcelain Thief: Searching the Middle Kingdom for Buried China. Unabridged Books on Tape.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Huan Hsu. 2015. The Porcelain Thief: Searching the Middle Kingdom for Buried China. Books on Tape.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Huan Hsu, The Porcelain Thief: Searching the Middle Kingdom for Buried China. Books on Tape, 2015.
MLA Citation (style guide)Huan Hsu. The Porcelain Thief: Searching the Middle Kingdom for Buried China. Unabridged Books on Tape, 2015.
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HUAN HSU, born in the Bay Area and raised in Salt Lake City is a former staff writer for the Washington City Paper in Washington, DC, and the Seattle Weekly and is the recipient of two Society of Professional Journalists awards as well as of recognition from the Casey Foundation for Meritorious Journalism. His essays and fiction have also appeared in Slate, The Literary Review, and Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts. He currently lives in Amsterdam and teaches creative writing at Amsterdam University College.
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HUAN HSU, born in the Bay Area and raised in Salt Lake City is a former staff writer for the Washington City Paper in Washington, DC, and the Seattle Weekly and is the recipient of two Society of Professional Journalists awards as well as of recognition from the Casey Foundation for Meritorious Journalism. His essays and fiction have also appeared in Slate, The Literary Review, and Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts. He currently lives in Amsterdam and teaches creative writing at Amsterdam University College.
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A journalist travels throughout mainland China and Taiwan in search of his family’s hidden treasure and comes to understand his ancestry as he never has before.
In 1938, when the Japanese arrived in Huan Hsu’s great-great-grandfather Liu’s Yangtze River hometown of Xingang, Liu was forced to bury his valuables, including a vast collection of prized antique porcelain, and undertake a decades-long trek that would splinter the family over thousands of miles. Many years and upheavals later, Hsu, raised in Salt Lake City and armed only with curiosity, moves to China to work in his uncle’s semiconductor chip business. Once there, a conversation with his grandmother, his last living link to dynastic China, ignites a desire to learn more about not only his lost ancestral heirlooms but also porcelain itself. Mastering the language enough to venture into the countryside, Hsu sets out to separate the layers of fact and fiction that have obscured both China and his heritage and finally complete his family’s long march back home.
Melding memoir, travelogue, and social and political history, The Porcelain Thief offers an intimate and unforgettable way to understand the complicated events that have defined China over the past two hundred years and provides a revealing, lively perspective on contemporary Chinese society from the point of view of a Chinese American coming to terms with his hyphenated identity.- reviews
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- source: Michael Meyer, author of The Last Days of Old Beijing and In Manchuria
- content: "Huan Hsu's return to his ancestral Chinese village in search of buried treasure keeps readers turning the pages, eager to see what he finds. The dig turns up more than ancient family valuables, as Hsu meets distant relatives and learns of the turmoil that they endured and that he, as an American-born Chinese, avoided. Part memoir, part journey, and part archaeological expedition, The Porcelain Thief is as suspenseful as any Indiana Jones adventure."
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- content: Huan Hsu's great-great-grandfather left buried porcelain behind when he fled Japanese attacks on China in 1938. The author's narration of his search for the porcelain grows more compelling as he journeys back to the places of his family's history. Describing his life as an "ABC"--American-born Chinese--living in Shanghai, he injects a tone of humor that sneaks up on listeners. His keen observational eye also comes through as he tells about subway rides and the company he works for. His daily experiences are blended with Chinese history and a general exploration of porcelain, but what sets Hsu's story apart is his fascinating family history. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
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March 16, 2015
American-born journalist Hsu hears that his great-great grandfather, a landowner in Xingang, buried a large collection of porcelain when Japan invaded China in 1938. Hsu sets out to find this treasure trove more than 70 years later. The book recounts Hsu's travel to China and ensuing three-year search, "equipped with only a few threads of a family legend and an irresistible compulsion to know more about it." This compulsion drives the story as he meets and interviews family members and acquaintances, and gradually "unearth pieces of family's history and to weave them into a coherent narrative." He conducts his search, in his own words, "naïvely, indirectly, protractedly." While it is hard to argue with this characterization of the search and the book as a whole, the book's naïveté and indirectness enable the narrative to wander across genres. In addition to documentary and family history, Hsu explores China's social and political history, as well as his personal feelings about China, and the value of documenting and sharing Chinese family stories. Hsu's fluid writing helps to synthesize these threads into a coherent story well worth reading.
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A journalist travels throughout mainland China and Taiwan in search of his family’s hidden treasure and comes to understand his ancestry as he never has before.
In 1938, when the Japanese arrived in Huan Hsu’s great-great-grandfather Liu’s Yangtze River hometown of Xingang, Liu was forced to bury his valuables, including a vast collection of prized antique porcelain, and undertake a decades-long trek that would splinter the family over thousands of miles. Many years and upheavals later, Hsu, raised in Salt Lake City and armed only with curiosity, moves to China to work in his uncle’s semiconductor chip business. Once there, a conversation with his grandmother, his last living link to dynastic China, ignites a desire to learn more about not only his lost ancestral heirlooms but also porcelain itself. Mastering the language enough to venture into the countryside, Hsu sets out to separate the layers of fact and fiction that have obscured...- sortTitle
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