Tina:
The connection to the book, I think was the familiarity of Chinese culture. And again I come back to the humanity of the characters of these people, however flawed they may be. They become like your family. You want to know what happens next? The Good Earth is part of a trilogy. There's two other books you know, and you want to read them next. You want to see what happens. It wasn't even so much the story itself as it was the people that she created.
Steph:
Welcome to the Bookish Expats show on the GeoPats podcast where we discuss books that help us understand the host countries and cultures that we have or are currently living in. This is Stephanie. I am a first generation Italian American living in Shanghai, China. I first got my head stuck in a book about the same time I got my first passport at the age of 5 years old and I haven't stopped reading since. In this podcast episode, I am honored to talk to Tina Karnagaridem about the book the Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Tina is a bookish expat with both strong historic and literary knowledge of China. I have been to a number of bookish events actually in Shanghai where Tina and her husband have joined to provide some historic context to the books that we were reading and discussing. And every time she was there I was blown away. Not just by her knowledge, because you can acquire knowledge, but I was blown away by how approachable she made. Sometimes the dense information about the context that these certain books were based on just so approachable, relatable and downright funny sometimes. Tina is one of those people that balances intelligence, perspective and humor perfectly. And you know how hard that is, right? More about Tina and her book selection in just a second. But I wanted to say a quick few things about the podcast. First of all, Damon Castillo is letting us use this music that's in the background. This is from the Mess of Me album. You can find all his information at Damon Castillo. Thank you Damon. Also, the geopat's podcast newsletter number four is now out. You can sign up for the newsletter@stephfuccio.com and see all four of the newsletters that we put out so far. There is past and present and future guest information, episode information recommended episodes that are not my own podcast, believe it or not, that connect to the things that we're talking about on the GeoPats podcast and so much more. If listening to podcasts makes you think about starting your own podcast, I would like to help you with that. First and foremost, you can get a free month of Podbean hosting service by using this promo code podbean.com virtualexpats and if you are an expat, I'm starting a Beginning Expat Podcasters Online workshop in September, the 25th and 27th so far, but I'll add on more dates as we go again. StephFuccio.com is your one stop shop for podcasting everything these days. You can also find a list of a lot of different expat podcasts to see the expat podcasting community that you would be vocally joining. If you don't want to record your voice but do need a voice, I'm selling mine. Really really really really. If you or anyone you know, maybe your company needs a voiceover talent, hey, that would be me. That can be me. Voices.com actors forward/stephfuccio is where you can request my voice skill. What I am not charging for people is the promo spots and the announcements that are in this geopat's podcast. I'll warn you right now, they're going to happen about every 20 minutes. I love to share information. I often jokingly say that the essence, Stephanie means share, and that includes other people's informations. And I love having the other voices in the podcast as well. So I'm offering these for free to content creators and to people that have projects that are connected to the things that we're talking about in the geopat's podcast. So those are not paid, those are free. And I think these projects are awesome and that's why they're here. All right, let's get back to Tina. Tina's geographic background is equally as fascinating as the knowledge she has about China. The short version of is that she grew up in Singapore and the US and moved to China with her husband in 1995. China was a large part of her bookish upbringing, and the book the Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck was a part of this book backdrop of her childhood. In fact, when I asked her the first time that she read it, she could not remember a time when it wasn't in the house. So that is quite a presence. The Good Earth is a story. At least the Internet will tell you a story of farm life in rural China in the early 20th cent. But as Tina aptly points out a few times in the conversation, it is so much more than that. Tina read this book as a child, as an adult, after she moved to China and again recently for this conversation. How does this book connect to her own China journey? What did she learn about Chinese culture through all of these different readings of the book. I guess you'll just have to keep listening to find that out because I'm not spoiling it. Two quick sound notes for you and here come the apologies. I tried out a new recording space and made some mistakes. My mic is a little bit quieter than Tina's mic. We did everything we could with the leveling, but it's noticeable. Also, there's a weird drilling sound around about 30 minutes in.
Tina:
It goes away.
Steph:
It's not there for long, but it's there. If you're someone that is sound sensitive, you may want to skip over this episode or you may want to skip ahead. When these things happen, I did want to let you know they're there or. But this is a part of modern day China.
There's always sounds. No matter how soundproof boothish you get, which we were. Things happen. My apologies, but this is life. If you have any questions or comments or anything about this or any of the episodes of the geopat's podcast, or any of the reworking of everything connected to the podcast, please feel free to reach out to me. I'm literally Steph Fuccio everywhere. S T E P H F U C C I O I'm most easily reachable on Instagram, WeChat and Gmail, but I'll answer the other places too. All right, all right, all right, enough of me. Let's get to Tina. She's the much more interesting person in this conversation, I promise you.
Thank you so much, Tina, for joining us on the GeoPats podcast, the bookish expats episode.
Tina:
Thank you for having me.
Steph:
Yay. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about your China self and bookish self and however that intertview my China self?
Tina:
Well, I guess Chinese culture has always been part of my life. I was born in Singapore and grew up in Singapore and Chinese culture was always all around and we participated in it. And then I married a man who studied China in Singapore. All this before I ever set foot in China and we moved here for his job in 1995 and we have been in China ever since.
Steph:
Did you move to Shanghai first?
Tina:
No, we moved to Beijing for two years and then Shanghai in 97.
Steph:
Okay, what book did you pick for this episode?
Tina:
I picked the Good Earth by Pearl Buck.
Steph:
Can you do like a one or two sentence ish kind of summary of what the book's about or is there a back cover that you want to.
Tina:
Well, let me see what it says on the back cover. So I happen to have with me the 1944 edition where it called A Great Book of Our Generation. The book was published in 1931. Wang Long, Rising from humble Chinese farmer to wealthy landowner, gloried in the soil he worked, held it above his family, even above his gods. But between the Good Earth and him were intersposed flood and drought, pestilence and revolution. Through one Chinese peasant and his children, Ms. Buck traces the whole cycle of life, its terrors, its passions, its persistent ambitions and its meager reward. The Good Earth is a universal tale of the destiny of all men.
Steph:
Do you think that is an appropriate summary, do you think that's a good summary of what the book encompasses?
Tina:
It is, I suppose, part of what the book encompasses, but, you know, I sort of say it also includes really the cycles of life in a Chinese village and really the Chinese farm life, which was, you know, the vast majority of China life for most of its.
Steph:
History until very, very recently.
Tina:
Very. Until modern times, essentially.
Steph:
Right. How far back or when do you think it started to change? Or change?
Tina:
I mean, urbanization, I think, is a very modern thing. I would say post 1970s.
Steph:
That's very recent. I have to say that, because I was born in the 1970s, I have to think that was like a blink away from right now. I guess this is a good time to tell the listeners your part in the historical part of Shanghai. Can you introduce Historic Shanghai, a group that you co founded?
Tina:
Absolutely. So when we first got to Shanghai, my husband and I, and, you know, remember, our backstory is he'd studied China, I had studied international relations. We knew about Shanghai, we knew about the concessions, but nothing really prepared us for the depth of what we saw. So many buildings, so much history, and we didn't know anything about it. I mean, we knew nothing. And so we just started, you know, looking and researching and talking to people who knew. And that goes on today.
Steph:
All right, how did you find out about this book?
Tina:
You know, you asked that question and I honestly don't know. The Good Earth has always been in my life. I can't remember when I first read it, but I know my parents read was in the house. I picked it up sometime, I guess, between the time I was 12 and 15. I. I don't really remember exactly when.
Steph:
So you read it considerably before you lived here?
Tina:
Oh, yes, yes. Because again, China was a big part of our life. And my father, who was born in 1922, he was a doctor, but he had a very strong understanding of history as it flows as a thread. If you will. And so he understood the importance of the Chinese revolutions. So he, you know, was a full adult in 1949. And, you know, because of that, he understood the importance of books like this. So Pearl Buck and Han Suyen, who was also a half Chinese, half Belgian writer. I mean, these were always around the house. I don't remember anyone saying, you should read this or here's a book. But it was there, as were many other of her books.
Steph:
Was it the first book you read on China?
Tina:
I had there. I had, like, books of fairy tales when I was a child. I think that was the first book I read, published in England, but I think it was the first book on China. Yeah.
Steph:
So let's get into a little bit of your reader background. Well, I guess I assume that when people come on the show that they admit to being a rather bookish person, a bookworm, that kind of thing. Is that a safe assumption?
Tina:
I think so, yeah. I read a lot. I know a lot of people who read a lot more. So I probably don't think of myself as a bookworm. I have a sister who reads a ridiculous amount, and I don't read that much much, but I always have, like, a stack of books next to the bed.
Steph:
Ditto. Ditto. Okay, so what was the first book that really, that made you realize that you loved reading?
Tina:
It was, I think, when I was about five or six, it was an English book called Naughty Meets Father Christmas. So naughty is this, you know, little toy. And I loved that book so much that I copied it out because I wanted to, like, make it my own in some way. And so I think that counts.
Steph:
And did you change any part of the story?
Tina:
No, I didn't. I didn't. It was perfect. And that writer, an English writer, Enid Blyton, I read, I think, all of her books. She wrote an incredible range, and she wrote in the 1940s, perhaps in the 50s, and she wrote, you know, children's books, like, you know, for that age. She also wrote these school stories, boarding school stories. She wrote mystery and adventure stories and all of those. You know, like a lot of the books that I like, they just take you into another world. And growing up in Singapore, when you're reading about these people and this, you know, weird food that they're eating that you've never tasted, or snow, it really is another world.
Steph:
Oh, I'm going to forget the lovely Nigerian writer's name, but she did a TED Talk on the danger of a single story.
Tina:
Yes, I remember that one.
Steph:
Yeah, yeah. She talked about Ginger beer and not knowing what it was. No one had it desperately.
Tina:
Any idea? Yes. And pickled eggs and, you know, I think we can all recite all those, you know, all the picnic foods.
Steph:
How would you describe your relationship with books or with reading?
Tina:
I think it's very. A relatively private one. I read, I think about it. Usually if anybody hears about it, it's my husband saying, oh, my God, you must listen to this. Such insight, you know? But I don't really. Occasionally I'll do a book review, but it tends to be much more private than public. I have been a member of not very many book clubs. I mean, for no good reason, but I think, you know, it's more like I don't really feel the need to talk about them with other people.
Steph:
Right. Okay. Is it safe to say that you don't read, like, anything online about books or book reviews or you're not in any groups online talking about books either?
Tina:
Sometimes, like, I'm on Goodreads.
Steph:
Okay.
Tina:
And I do occasionally read. Read reviews, and sometimes I find them helpful, but just as often not.
Steph:
Yeah. How do you interact with a book or do you interact with a book? Do you highlight or change anything in it as you're reading? Not change, but do you not make notes anywhere in the book?
Tina:
No, I really don't. Really don't.
Steph:
Okay. Do you prefer hardcover, paperback, ebooks, audiobooks?
Tina:
I think it depends. Usually it's paperback just because of the ease of reading. And when you fall asleep, it doesn't, like, hit you in the nose. And then ebooks for travel, that's really such an innovation. You don't have to carry four books with you.
Steph:
That makes a lot of sense.
Steph:
Yeah.
Steph:
So it sounds like you read before you go to sleep at night.
Tina:
Mostly, yeah.
Steph:
Is there a specific kind of book that you read at certain times of the day?
Tina:
No, but I do sometimes jump around between books. Sometimes I'll read a book sort of halfway through, and then something else comes up. And sometimes I have to read something for something I'm doing, so I'll jump back and forth, and that's usually not too much of an issue.
Steph:
What's the maximum amount of books you can be in the process of reading at any given time?
Tina:
Probably no more than three.
Steph:
Oh, good. Okay. That's three or four if the topics are varied enough for me. But if it's the same, like, if it's fiction books, I have to limit myself to one of those. One of, like, nonfiction. One of the topics have to be very different.
Tina:
Yeah.
Steph:
Otherwise they start Confusing, which, I mean, is not tragic in any way, shape, or form, but does kind of mess up when I jump back into the book and I think that I'm in a different one. Can yours be different topics or the same kind of book?
Tina:
No, I think they do have to be different topics or at least different genres.
Steph:
Yeah, that's probably a better. That's a much better way to say it. Thank you. Let's go back and do different genres. So you grew up in Singapore and then you moved to China in 1995?
Tina:
Well, I grew up in Singapore and then moved. Our family moved to the US in 1970, and I lived there until after graduate school, went back to Singapore to work, which is where I met my husband. We went back to the US For a couple years, had two kids, and then moved to China.
Steph:
Okay. In those moves from country to country, did what you were reading change at all?
Tina:
Not dramatically, no. I mean, when I got to Singapore as an adult, I wanted to read all these books about Singapore. When I moved to the US I kept reading the English books because they were so much better than the American books. And, you know, I never read. I guess I must have been slightly too old when I got there to read Little House on the Prairie. So I only read that when my daughter was reading it, and I was like, oh, these are great, because she was way into them. So I skipped that whole period. So, yes and no. So, yes. When I got to Singapore, I was in my 20s, and then I started reading all sorts of things about Singapore, both fiction and nonfiction.
Steph:
So it sounds like your reading might have changed more by just changing generations and growing up than it did the place itself.
Tina:
Yeah. Although when I got to China, I started reading a lot about China because there's so much to read.
Steph:
Right. There really, really, really is. I guess this is a good time to talk about language, too. Are you fluent in Mandarin Chinese?
Tina:
I am not.
Steph:
Do you read in Mandarin Chinese?
Tina:
No.
Steph:
Oh, okay. So all of the books that you read about China are in English?
Tina:
Yes. Yes.
Steph:
So there really are that many? Because sometimes I walk into bookstores or I look online or I talk to people, and I think there can't be that many translated into English. There are.
Tina:
Well, there are in English and translation, but you're right. I mean, translation, there's far fewer.
Steph:
Right.
Tina:
But there is a ton in English. And then if you go back, because we have a lot of old books as well. So if you go back and look at what was written in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, so much so. Much more.
Steph:
Wow. Okay. I hadn't even really thought of that. I assume that most of the ones I'm reading are, and I think vast majority are translated from Chinese to English. But you're saying there's also a very big group that is written originally in English?
Tina:
Yeah, mostly nonfiction.
Steph:
Okay.
Tina:
For fiction, you're right. A lot of it is Chinese translated into English. Contemporary Chinese writers.
Steph:
Right, right, right. So you're talking about, like, historical books.
Tina:
On China, memoirs, nonfiction, you know, like books about specific periods of history. Yeah, things like that. There is a little bit of fiction, but not. Not a ton.
Steph:
Right. Wow. Okay. So readers, listeners, you've got a lot of homework to do. And what was the last book that you read? Not including, if you rewrite this one.
Tina:
I was just in Laos and I was looking for something to read, and there's a English writer who's written a series on a Laotian doctor, a Laotian coroner. And so that's what I read. It's called the Coroner's Lunch, and it's set in Vientiane.
Steph:
Wow. All right, let's dig into the book. It's so cool that you brought it with you. I'm definitely going to take pictures of this and have it in the. The show notes, folks. It's beautiful. Does it have pictures inside?
Tina:
No, no pictures inside.
Steph:
Oh, but it has that really, really cool older font style. All right, none of this you guys can. Can actually experience, but when you first read the book, you were quite young. How many times have you read it since then?
Tina:
I honestly can't count. I reread it regularly, and I feel like every time I reread it, I get something different from it only because I feel like I know bits of China better. So I see things in there that I didn't see the first time or that, you know, just went over my head.
Steph:
Do you have any memories of your initial impression the first first time or first few times that you read it?
Tina:
I think, you know, if I had a memory, it was really about the humanity of the characters and feeling that whether you liked them or disliked them, they were almost like family. I mean, like, you felt that you knew them really, really well.
Steph:
That is incredibly true. Well, let's introduce the listeners to the main characters. Can you take us through the core family in the story?
Tina:
Sure. So there is Wang Lung the farmer and his wife Olan, and his father. And Wang Lung and Olan have several children. I think it's four, five, because there's.
Steph:
Two sons and a daughter.
Tina:
There's twins. So I Think it's five. Yeah. So it's three sons and two daughters, five children, a couple of concubines, an uncle. So, you know, there's a bit of the extended family there as well.
Steph:
Right, right, right. Now that you mentioned that they never actually said the father's name.
Steph:
Right.
Steph:
He was just always mentioned as father.
Tina:
No, and this is an interesting thing too, because I was thinking about names because I seem to remember that hearing that, you know, in some villages, girls didn't get names because they were so worthless. But it seems that, you know, you always did call people by their sort of elder brother, younger sister sort of thing, because when he takes his children to school, the scholar gives them names. Oh, and he didn't have. They didn't have names before that. So, you know, maybe I'm misremembering or maybe, you know, it was just names were not necessary. But the farmer has a name, and the old lady also says that when Olan comes to their house, she didn't have a name, but they gave her a name.
Steph:
Okay. Maybe they had a name at the. When they were born or somewhere near there, but it's just not used that much. The family names are used more often than the names.
Tina:
Yeah, perhaps. Yes.
Steph:
I don't know. The reason why I'm saying that is I have some friends in China who have the nai nanny, and when she talks about the husband, she'll say his name. She won't say his name. She'll say daddy instead of his name, even though they're talking about him when he's not there and she's talking to the I. And likewise, when he talks about the wife, he'll say mommy instead of. So they'll say the family name and not say the name of the actual person that's not there.
Tina:
Yeah, and I don't know why that might be respectful.
Steph:
I don't know.
Steph:
Just a difference, I suppose. All right, so why did you come back to reading it so often? What was it about it that really.
Tina:
I think I started, like, rereading it when I came to China because I thought, okay, here's a book about China, I should read it. And almost one of the first things I noticed on that second or, you know, subsequent read around was, like, things I hadn't noticed about that she had said about language and just how good she was at describing it, because. And this is one of the things that stood out for me in all her books is her English has this cadence and rhythm that sounds. Does it sound Chinese? Does it sound foreign? But you know when you're reading it that you're not reading it in English, as it were. You understand that you're reading something that's from somewhere else. And I think that's something that I've always liked about her books. And she has actually said that when she writes, she thinks in Chinese. Chinese was her first language. It was not her first written language, but she learned it about the same time. And so she said when she writes, she thinks in Chinese and literally translates as she goes, oh, wow. And I feel like you can see that. I mean, some things you can see are direct translations, some things are not. But yet. And there's things that, you know, I'm not sure you'd say in either language, but somehow the phrasing of them is foreign.
Steph:
And part of me. I did do this on audio. Full disclaimer Unabridged But I did do it on audio, and I did feel that as I was listening to it, it definitely had a rhythm to it that kind of brought me into a different part of China that I'm living now, which is in Shanghai. And I wasn't sure if it was the time period or because it was set in, like, rural China or what it was. But I think.
Tina:
And all her books are like that, all of them that she. She uses this, you know, the sort of. This style, this linguistic style.
Steph:
Right, right. What is her backstory? Geographically? Did she grow up in China?
Tina:
She has such a great backstory. In fact, interestingly enough, like in the modern era, that gets talked about more than her books. So she was not born in China. She was born in West Virginia, but she came to China when she was very young. Her parents were missionaries, and they lived in Zhenjiang, which is in Jiangsu Province. And that's where she grew up. She lived there until she was 17 and went to Randolph Macon, which she didn't like because she was bullied, because she was different. She came back, married a man who was an agriculturalist. Apparently wasn't a very happy marriage. And they lived in Nanjing, but they also lived for a brief time because he was studying agriculture. And he's actually one of the leading agricultural economists of that period, and his name is Buck. That's where her name comes from. They live for a brief period in Hanohe, where the good Earth is set. And then they moved to Nanjing. And she wrote the book when they were at Nanjing, at Nanjing University. And she went back to the US sometime in the 40s, and she was never able to come back. She wanted to come back I think just before she died, like, in 72, she died in 73. And she was denied a visa because she'd been critical of the government. But yet she was one of these people who, you know, who really was of both worlds. And she was unapologetic about it. And she would say, I'm Chinese and I'm American. And people always wanted her to choose. And at some point, somebody said to her, you know, will you ever go back to China? And she said, china is in me. It was, you know, I was a girl in China. I was a woman in China. China will always be with me.
Steph:
Right, Right.
Tina:
And so she died in West Virginia, and on her grave is her name in Chinese. But because of, you know, McCarthyism and so forth, she really fell out of favor in the US she fell out of favor in China. And it was interesting because, again, in Asia, in Singapore, she was very well known. I mean, everybody I knew read her. And I remember when my uncle first met my husband, who was, you know, supposed to be this guy who'd studied China, and he said, so wait, he hasn't read Pearl Buck. My husband hadn't even heard of Pearl Buck, you know, but that's the period that it was. I mean, nobody was studying her. Nobody was reading her. There is a man at Nanjing University who is now the acknowledged China scholar on Pearl Buck. And he says the reason was that he went to a conference in the US in 1984, and people were like, oh, you're from Nanjing University. That's where Pearl Buck was. Tell us about her. He'd never heard about her. He actually has rehabilitated, like, you know, Pearl Buck house there. So her. The place where she wrote the Good Earth is now a museum, although it always seems to be closed. And her house in Xinjiang, where she grew up, is a museum. And that is really lovely.
Steph:
By trying to kind of combine the places that she was quote, unquote from, it sounds like she was kind of ostracized by both.
Tina:
She really was. And she won the Nobel Prize for this, and it was hugely criticized. And I think, frankly, in part because she was a woman and in part because it was such a popular book, it was on the bestseller list for 21 months. And, you know, prior to that had been 15 years, since the book had been on the bestseller lists for that long. And apparently criticisms ranged from, well, she's not really an American writer because she's spent her whole life in China and she's written about China, to what does an American know about China? How can she write about China, she's not Chinese. So I mean, they just picked on anything they could, right?
Steph:
Yeah.
Steph:
If you're not clearly one, is nationality the word I want? If you're not clearly from one place, you're clearly not from any place. Like, it's just.
Tina:
Yeah. And you know, we deal with this now.
Steph:
Right.
Tina:
And you know, I think it's not very different, except that I think it was probably harder then because, you know, you only had the voices, like in the press, for example. You didn't have a Twitter thread where people could defend her.
Steph:
I think there's almost more of us in this kind of multiple place existence. But there still is a resistance to acknowledging that you can do that.
Tina:
Very much so. Very much so. Yeah.
Steph:
Oh, beating the own drum. This is part of why this exists is because expats, a lot of times I know you've been here too long to be called an expat. It's a very big umbrella that I'm using. And as part of the geopat name as well is there's so many living outside of your passport. Country ish kind of home country ish kind of existences that don't get acknowledged. People always want you to talk about where you're originally from, even if you haven't lived there for a long time. It's like, no, folks. There's a lot of different versions of where people can live and what experience and connection they can have to a place.
Steph:
Okay, I admit I was getting a bit on my soapbox there about expats and geopets and you know, what gonna continue. And I have a specific date that it's really going to continue on, and it is International Podcast Day. But first their announcement and then I'll give you my announcement. That's a pretty good compromise, right? Here we go.
Speaker E
International podcast day is September 30th, and you can help spread the word. You may be asking, what can I do to get involved? It's pretty simple. Head over to internationalpodcastday.com and check the suggestions. Then use International Podcast Day to join the conversation. You can reach out and connect with other podcasters, listeners, and your favorite podcast hosts. Remember September 30th, International Podcast Day, a day long celebration of the power of podcasts.
Steph:
Okay, so my announcement, I cannot apparently talk enough about the expat experience, the geopad experience, and where those two different or are they different lifestyles connect and disconnect. And I want to go into that some more. And what have I done? What have I done? I have created an Expat Podcasters panel. So three of us on International Podcast Day are going to have one hour to fill your head with stove boxing on geopats and expats. We're not. We're so not. But what we are going to do is talk about our different locations. We're all in Asia and I'll give you more information as we get closer. But for now, know that there will be three of us. We are podcasters. We are not from the countries that we live in, but we do live here and we are talking about the places and some of us are not.
Tina:
What?
Steph:
Yeah, I know. We have 60 minutes to explain. Don't worry, our locations are different, our relationship to the locations are different, and our expatness geopatnis is different. Am I teasing you enough?
Tina:
Good.
Steph:
When is it? Excellent question. Thank you so much for asking. If you're in North America, I'm going to do Eastern Standard Time because, hey, I was born in New York, so 10pm on September 29th. I know it's a big ask, but trust me, if you stay up for that hour, I think you'll find it worth it. There is a live chat and I hope you join us in there to ask us questions, watch, applaud, boo, what have you. Hopefully not boo, but you know what I mean. That is 10am My time in China and wherever that falls in between. For the lovely folks who in Europe who are crazy enough to wake up at like 4 or 5 in the morning to join us, I would love to have you in the chat room and all other locations. International Podcast day itself is 30 hours, 30 hours of different sessions from podcasters literally all around the world. The title International Podcast Day is seriously meant in this experience. I missed so much sleep last year during International Podcast Day and every minute that I missed was worth it. Internationalpodcastday.com is where you can find all of the speaker informations, the full 30 hours of programming, and so much more. I hope you join me for the Expat Podcasters in Asia session on again, 10pm on September 29, which is 10am on September 30 because I'm ahead of you all in China and I hope you join some of the other sessions, if not all of the other sessions. International podcast day.com Trust me. If you like podcasts, if you like listening to podcasts, if you want to make a podcast, if you do make a podcast, if the word podcast brings a warm, fuzzy feeling to you, you're going to want to do this free online Event, no registration. Just show up and watch and hopefully chat with us. Thank you. Let's get back to Tina.
Steph:
I don't think it was a slip at all. When you said, when you first read the book and you were a child and you were talking about when you came back to China, when you originally were coming here for the first time. I think the book kind of had. You helped you feel like you had been there already.
Tina:
Absolutely. Yes, it's true.
Steph:
Yeah, yeah. Because it is all encompassing. I think for me, reading or listening to the book, I had to take it in like one hour chunks because I felt so immersed in it. And there are really tough times in the book and I couldn't do more than an hour at a time because I would start to feel the intensity of it.
Tina:
Yes. I mean, her characters, you really, you feel what they feel, but she does it in such a matter of fact way that perhaps you feel it even more. But I was going to say I wanted to go back to. So this whole idea of appropriation.
Steph:
Yes.
Tina:
Because, you know, that's essentially what she was being accused of. Right. Can you write this book? And let's leave aside for a minute the fact that, you know, she grew up in a remote village, essentially feeling very Chinese and, you know, being able to interact, you know, almost as a Chinese child would have. Of course she's different, you know, she's got yellow hair and so forth. But there's also this idea that perhaps outsiders can see things that insiders cannot. And is that appropriation? I don't know. And are we not all outsiders to something? We were just talking about this in terms of movies because the movie made from the good Earth is one of the greatest travesties on the planet. It is the most. Okay, not only do you have a, you know, you have white people playing the Chinese and there were Chinese around. This was, you know, the Anna May Wong period. And the only time you see a Chinese face in some of these crowd scenes where the mobs are surging in to Wang Long's door. But the woman who played Holan was this German actress, Louise Raynor, I think was her name, who has a thick German accent and she won an Academy Award.
Steph:
I don't even know what to say to all this.
Tina:
And you never hear, I mean, I bring this up every chance I get. You never hear about this. And I think, you know, Yul Brynner and the King and I, I'm okay with that. He's half Russian. That's practically Asian. He lived in Harbin. But then there's also this idea that, you know, we're not getting too far off topic. Chaoyan Fat played another version of the King. He's not Thai either, but that's okay because he's Asian. But Yul Brynner's half Asian ness isn't okay.
Steph:
So it's really funny where we draw those lines. What's okay? Are you really enough? Are you Chinese enough? Are you American enough? Are you Thai enough?
Tina:
Yeah. And, you know, there's this large blob of Asians. Oh, but that's okay. You're sort of from that. From that area. Yeah, yeah.
Steph:
I'm not even going to bring up crazy rich Asians.
Tina:
Oh, I'm sorry.
Steph:
See, as a non Asian, I could enjoy it for a cute rom com, but I understood. Oh, some things.
Tina:
But as a Singaporean.
Steph:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I can only imagine. I can only imagine. Even so I was just like, okay, what is happening right now? No, stick to the story. Just stick to the story. Because I love Constance Wu.
Tina:
I do, too. I think she's fabulous. And of course, the other thing is Singapore has some terrific actors.
Steph:
Right. Where were they? And why did we say.
Tina:
I mean, as Singaporeans said, you know, it's a Chinese American movie. Made the Chinese Americans happy.
Steph:
Oh, did it?
Tina:
I think so, yeah. Yeah. That's why it did really well there. It didn't do that well in Singapore. It did really badly in China.
Steph:
Yeah.
Steph:
So character wise, there's so much that happens in the story and it covers quite a long. What period of time does it cover? It's like 1920s.
Tina:
Yeah. I mean, she's vague about it, which I think is deliberate because she wants to talk about the timeless Chinese countryside. But obviously there's revolution going on. And this is the warlord period, so I would say twenties. It's set sometime in the twenties.
Steph:
Reading this as a child, there's a lot of family drama, shall we say, a lot of it from a male point of view, A lot of it having to do around the placement, misplacement and we'll just leave it at that, of women and getting married, having children, those kinds of things. Did you pick up on any of that as a kid or did you just kind of cruise past it and get into the deeper feel of the book?
Tina:
I remember feeling really uncomfortable at a lot of it because, you know, as you say, a lot of it is not happy. And I remember feeling annoyed, I don't think angry is the right word, but annoyed at Holland for not standing up for herself. But at the same Time when I think about the book, it was one of these books that, you know, I say I reread it regularly, and I have since I've been here, but before I came to China, I hadn't really reread it, but there are certain scenes that always stuck with me.
Steph:
Oh, excellent. What are they?
Tina:
The daughter talking about the foot binding. Yes. Pearls. Holland, you know, getting the pearls taken away from her. Lotus.
Steph:
Okay, we spoil things. Go ahead and tell the listeners what.
Tina:
This book was published in 1931. People, if you haven't read it, do.
Steph:
Know that we're going to spoil everything possible about the book. So for the sake of having a conversation.
Tina:
And that last scene about, you know, the very, very last scene when Wang Lung says, you know, don't sell the land, and his sons look over his head because that's. Yeah, sort of the end of all the old lady in the house of Huang. You know, all these sort of, like. Because they were so well drawn, these characters, they stick with you. They really, really do. And you feel like you. Like I say, you know, these people.
Steph:
So, okay, so there was a discomfort, but there was a connection to the book. There was a discomfort, but there was a connection to the book. What was that connection?
Tina:
So the discomfort. Yes. And I also think I was old enough when I read it to understand that this is how women were treated in traditional societies, and so that it wasn't a surprise. The connection to the book, I think, was the familiarity of Chinese culture. And again, I come back to the humanity of the characters of these people, however flawed they may be. They become like your family. You want to know what happens next? The Good Earth is part of a trilogy. There's two other books, you know, and you want to read them next. You want to see what happens with the sons. You want to see what happens. It wasn't even so much the story itself as it was the people that she created.
Steph:
Right. Yeah. No, they are intense. I do feel like I know these characters. Like, you couldn't put a good character, bad character, very strong morals, sort of loose morals. Like, you can't put those.
Tina:
It's not like Faulkner.
Steph:
No, no, it's definitely not. You definitely have people who are very, very real and do what they need to do at the time. They need to do it.
Tina:
Yeah. I think, for me, one of the greatest things that she's done as a writer, and I will preface this by saying that enormous numbers of people say this is a bad book. It has no literary merit. I don't agree with that. And you know, I don't quite understand on what basis they say that, aside from the fact that it's a popular book. I mean, one of her own biographers said that some of her storylines were preposterous.
Steph:
Right.
Tina:
But this is not something that I feel or that or that I see. Or maybe I'm just like the, you know, the people who kept her on the. On the bestseller list for 21 months.
Steph:
I know there are people that rate literature, but I've never quite understood that this is a story. It's this person's story that she wrote. It's probably based somewhat on things she experienced. How can it be discredited as not being of merit if even one person connects with it?
Tina:
And obviously a lot of people did.
Steph:
So I don't understand the judgment of somebody's story. Well, that's not a good story. That shouldn't. That's not literary enough. Oh, here we go again. Enough. It's not Chinese enough.
Tina:
Literary enough.
Steph:
It's not literary enough.
Tina:
No, exactly. And, you know, there was a lot of discussion about that at the time that she won the Pulitzer and the Nobel, but particularly the Nobel, because she was the first American woman to win it. And some of her defenders said, you know, it's because they want to keep it to this, you know, like five people who read very, very complicated things and because it was so popular. But like I say, it's not something that I understand because I find that, you know, it's a good story and it's got, you know, extremely well developed characters. But what I was going to say is, what I really like about it is that she's able to tell the story from the point of view of Wang Long and she tells it truly through his voice. I mean, she doesn't judge, she doesn't, you know, narrate. She is him. I mean, she doesn't waver from that at all. So he's got no idea what Olan is all about. Now, wouldn't that be a great story, somebody writing it from her point of view? But neither does the author try and tell us more about what she's about. You know, we don't have these side things saying, you know, and this is why she's like this, and this is why she never speaks and blah, blah, blah. Instead we have the world exactly according to how he sees it and his changes in moods and his, you know, and he's clearly, you know, a nuanced. She's created a nuanced and flawed character. But as you said, he's not completely evil. And, you know, the honesty. You know, she's dying, she dies people. And you know, he's repulsed, still repulsed by her, you know, even though he's trying to be compassionate.
Steph:
Oh, I know. Yeah. So in his voice that I was thinking he said it, but he didn't. He's thinking not so kind things about her as she's literally on her deathbed. And yet because of other characters in the book and just other people that we probably met in our lives, it's like, well, he's not the worst person ever. He's just thinking something that's there. You can't control your thoughts. Like his uncle.
Tina:
Yeah, that's a bad guy.
Steph:
That's a bad guy. Anyway, towards the end it was the uncle's son. Like his cousin was also kind of following that line.
Tina:
Yes, yes.
Steph:
Straight out badness.
Tina:
Yeah, yeah.
Steph:
So those characters were clearly just okay. There's not a whole lot of nuance. They're just people you don't want in your life kind of thing. But Wenlan definitely was not that kind of person. Very honest, very blunt, but a nice. A nice person. After all is said and done, since.
Steph:
We'Re talking about good guys and bad guys, I want to talk about a very good woman, and that is Eva. You. Eva is a tech journalist from Korea who lived in Shanghai among a lot of other places, and last year cycled from Shanghai to London. Here she is.
Tina:
Hello, everyone.
Speaker F
I'm Eva Yu. I was a tech journalist in Israel, Silicon Valley, South Korea and China for five years. And last year I left my job and I started a cycling journey from Shanghai to London, interviewing the tech entrepreneurs on the ancient Silk Road. And so currently I'm writing a book about the cycling trip and I plan to donate the proceeds from the book to Turkey. So if you want to get in touch with me, my email is evaurmail.com so it's E V A Y-O-O-A R E gmail.com and my YouTube channel is Seek Road, which is S E E K R O A D. And my website is sikhroad Co. So it's not dot com, it's co.
Steph:
Thank you. I first met Eva in a podcast brunch club in Shanghai, and we were acquaintances for a while. Then she did her bicycle trip and then I actually interviewed her for the virtual expat show on the GeoPats podcast and you can find that on Geopets Podbean. And ever since then we. I've been following her a lot more closely. Oh, My gosh, if you think I have a lot of projects, you should go over to her website, C Road Co. She is phenomenal and interesting and doing stuff that's very impactful. So again, seek Road Co Evu. Trust me, you are going to be a fan. Speaking of being a fan, I'm a really big fan of Tina's Historic Shanghais and I'm very excited that Historic Shanghai is starting their very own book club in Shanghai. More info on that coming up.
Steph:
What is the last time that you read it?
Tina:
Besides this time? Probably a couple years ago, not even this time.
Steph:
Was there anything that stuck out to you this time?
Tina:
There was something when they were in Nanjing, the city that they go to, the southern city that they go to during the famine. She describes a missionary handing Wang Lung a piece of paper with Jesus on it. She doesn't ever say any of those things because it's Wang Lung experiencing it and he doesn't know what a missionary is and he doesn't know who Jesus is and he can't read. But it's very clear in her description that this is kind of a cameo of her father.
Steph:
Oh, I'm thinking back to that moment now, because he brought that home and was showing it to everybody that also couldn't read it.
Tina:
And they're trying to guess, figure out who this guy is. And they come to the conclusion that he must have been an evil guy to be hung up on a cross like that. And then they give it to Olan, who makes a shoe sole out of it, which again is part of the commentary because they said that, you know, she said that her father, she wrote a wonderful biography of her father called Fighting Angel. And she. She says of him that he was in China for 10 years, I think at the time that she was born and had maybe had 10 converts. And this is why, because, you know, people couldn't read. They were making shoe soles out of his, you know.
Steph:
Did the missionaries back then learn the local languages?
Tina:
They did. And missionaries were well known to have better language than anybody else. And remember in those days, you had to learn the dialect of where you were from. So, you know, if you were out in Xinjiang, you were learning the dialect of that, of that region.
Steph:
Right.
Steph:
Which would help in speaking. But did most people out in the countryside at that point read in whatever language would have been used?
Tina:
It seems like. Not, I think almost certainly not.
Steph:
Right. Wow. Any of the times that you've read it, is there anything that sticks out to you? Like, I've never seen that, experienced that or knew that that existed in China. Any cultural aspects that seem odd, different.
Tina:
Unlikely, not that I can think of off the top of my head. So I guess that means nothing like major. And taking into account this was, you know, written long, long, long ago for.
Steph:
Someone, if we can pretend like you have no, no information or knowledge of China, which is a very difficult if. For someone like, if you were that person that didn't know much about China and this is the first thing that you read or experienced, I want to say, about the history of China, because it feels like there's a lot of information in this, even though it's a narrative. What do you think would be the most surprising for them?
Tina:
Perhaps what might be most surprising is just how simple peasant life was and how basic. Because if you look at China today, if you're coming in to China today, and if your China is a city, and even if it's not a city, a big city, there is very little sense that this, a place like this, a place like this world that she's created exists where people are dependent on the weather, where, you know, famines are created regularly at some point they say, what, Every five to seven years, the grandfather says every five to seven years there's a famine. Famine or flood.
Steph:
That's often.
Tina:
So that's why they know, they know how to, how to deal with it. And I think there's. This is a whole history of China pre modern. That's. That. That's in there that I think might be hard to wrap your head around it. And I think just the, the vast, vastness of rural life.
Steph:
Right, right. Is the good earth read in China? Has it been translated into Chinese?
Tina:
It has. It was actually translated, you know, when she wrote it and it is now. But I don't know how much. I know Professor Liu at Nanjing University is, you know, is a big champion, but I don't know how much it's read. I know in the US Often it's read in high school. Oprah picked it in 2007, which was quite interesting. I don't know what was behind that, but, you know, I'm glad she did. And that gave it a little bit of a revival in the US But I don't think you read it in high school, for example, in China. But it is seen as a description of Chinese peasant life that no longer exists. So in that sense, it's considered valuable in China.
Steph:
Right. Going away from the book just a hair, do you think most people living in those, like, tier one cities, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, that kind of Thing. Do you think those, the local Chinese, do you think they're aware of this life that is not that long ago?
Tina:
That's a good question. I mean, how many generations are you removed from the land? Right. I think that. And I don't want to say just Chinese, but often people have a tendency not to talk about the past or history. So quite possibly not.
Steph:
With historic Shanghai, with the events and the tours that you guys do, do you have any local Chinese coming on and doing those things?
Tina:
We do, which is wonderful. We do, and it's very heartening because, you know, history, particularly in China, is complicated. And there are layers and layers and layers of it, and all of us only see a portion. If you only read English, you get what's in English. If you only read Chinese, you get what's in Chinese. So part of our, you know, mission is to kind of try and peel back all those layers and get information from different sources. And it's always really nice when we get a Shanghainese on a tour that says, I've lived here my whole life and I never knew this. And we often say, it's not your fault, that's not how it's taught. And, you know, we have to dig through a whole bunch of stuff to find this as well.
Steph:
Sure. There's research and time that goes into it. There is a term, like for splinternet, for the Chinese Internet versus the rest. I wonder if there's a term for. I like making up words for some reason, so I wonder if there is a term or if we can make a term. Splinter history. Splintstream. Splintstream Splint string.
Tina:
The history of spinster.
Steph:
No, but not to sound like spinster.
Tina:
Yeah. Splinter.
Steph:
Splitistry. I don't know. Anyway, I don't know if that exists, but maybe.
Tina:
But it's true. It's the same. It is the same thing. Yeah. And. And you know, we hear. And the same thing. I mean, there's things that we don't hear about, you know, in. In the English language world or the foreign language world about. About Chinese history.
Steph:
There's. There's bias in books and papers and education of history in almost every place, if not every place.
Tina:
Yeah.
Steph:
It's impossible to be objective. It's just a matter of what the lens and objective is at that time. I think that's why I had one professor who just said, if you do anything in your life, make sure you have a second language so you can read the newspaper in multiple languages and know that there's more than one way.
Tina:
To look at things, that's super important. Yes. Perspective.
Steph:
Yeah, it is. Yes, it is.
Tina:
But from a history point of view, also, this book, I think, you know, in terms of my understanding of China was very helpful because it really, it's got everything in there. It's got opium contributing to the decline of, you know, very literally contributing to, you know, the decline of the elite. It's in the background. But, you know, there's revolution going on. There's, you know, there's change. You've got the concubine system, foot binding, missionaries. It's all in there.
Steph:
It is. It definitely is. Have you ever quoted the book either verbatim or just like summarizing a part or a character in regular conversation with someone?
Tina:
I've talked about a little bit about the use of language, you know, in terms of like writers and, and how they use language. Because language is very important to me in books. If the language isn't really beautiful, it tends not to be a favorite. I may read it if there's good information, but, you know, there's, there's a difference. And also, you know, the bits where she describes the language, I really like that. Which describes the difference between the Anhui dialect and what they're speaking in, in Nanjing.
Steph:
Oh, do we know where that is in the book?
Tina:
We do. Let's see. Oh, this is also interesting because in Nanjing you also have this sense. And she never says it's Nanjing, it's just the Jiangsu city. Because again, she's telling it from Wang Lung's perspective and to him the name is irrelevant. He's just going to a city and this is where he feels like an outsider until he meets the foreigner and then who he takes in his rickshaw and he realizes, ah, so he actually has more in common with these black haired people. They're people that are even more different than the Nanjing people. So he's thinking about some of this and he says, you know, it's true that if one listened to the language of these southerners, it could be understood, if with difficulty. But Anhui is not Jiangsu. In Anhui, where Wang Long was born, the language is slow and deep and it wells from the throat. But in Jiangsu city, where they now lived, the people spoke in syllables which splintered from their lips and from the ends of their tongues.
Steph:
Whoa.
Steph:
So literally the language itself is more grounded.
Tina:
It sounds different.
Steph:
Sounds different, yeah. It's more closer to the earth than the one where he's being exposed to and obviously having a little bit of culture talk with which it seems more in the front of their. Oh, that's beautiful.
Tina:
Right. Because. So he's lived in this place, his village, his whole life. So this idea that these are his people, but he never feels like they are, but he can't really understand them, which is, you know, again, this idea that Westerners have that China is one whole mass. And Wang Lung says, well, no, it's not, because I've gone not that far, and I still. And I don't understand these people. They're not my people.
Steph:
Right. That's a deep lesson to take away now. And with so many people moving into the cities these days and, like, places like Beijing and Shanghai and whatnot, being such a mix of people from all over China, do you think people are more welcome?
Tina:
I do think that with people, you know, people sort of coming into cities like the migrants, that is an experience that is not unlike Wang Long's experience going to Nanjing because, you know, although he's going out of necessity, I think that the experience of being an outsider in a city that is still part of your country, having to figure things out and all of that, I think that's. That's probably, you know, that's something that you can see a parallel with.
Steph:
Yeah.
Tina:
Today, definitely.
Steph:
If Pearl were still alive or if we could have a session and conjure her up, what might you ask her about this book?
Tina:
You know, what I would ask her is why did she write it from the perspective of Wang Long instead of from Olan's perspective?
Steph:
I wonder what her answer would be. Was she trying to create a sense of mystery? Was she trying to have us guess what was going on?
Tina:
Yeah. No. I don't know. Was she? Yeah, just, you know, being, you know, switching things up because she was a woman. So she was expected to write about women. So she didn't.
Steph:
Yeah. Or did she think that.
Tina:
I don't know.
Steph:
Just totally guessing here. But did she think that if it was written from a woman's point of view, it would be brushed aside?
Tina:
Perhaps. Very, very likely that, you know, it would be considered the equivalent of Chicklet.
Steph:
Yeah. Oh, it's just a story about families.
Tina:
Yes.
Steph:
Often said when there's a book, like a generational book about families and what she's like, ah, it's just about women.
Tina:
Yeah. I mean, she got enough, you know, flack about it anyway. But if it had been a. A woman protagonist, I think might have been a very different story.
Steph:
I think I often had to look at. I mean, I wasn't reading a paper book, but I often had to, like, look Back at the COVID of it in my Audible app to double check the name again, because I was so entrenched in Won Lon's idea and his worlds that I had to go, okay, this is written by a woman. I did that a few times and I was like, really? And I looked her up and I googled and I had watched a couple of older interviews with her and things like that, and I'm like, it really was written by a woman?
Tina:
Yes. Yeah, exactly. And I think that, you know, that says a lot about characters, you know, and I was gonna say the other, other thing for me, in terms of how it's affected my China life is that she created a world and she created characters. And I keep coming back to this word, humanity, but characters that you liked. And a lot of the portraits of Chinese in those days were not. They were cartoonish or they were mocked and they were seen as other. But she created people and that helped me. When you, when you come to a place where you don't speak the language, maybe, you know, a bit of the culture, but let's face it, a lot of the culture that I knew in Singapore had been wiped out here. I mean, it came back, but, you know, a lot of that, all of those traditions didn't exist. So when you come to a place that is. That is new and you know nothing about the people, if you have this as your basis, you know, you just kind of feel warm and positive, even if it's, you know, at a very subconscious level. You know, you're not thinking of them as cartoons. You're not thinking, you know, let. This is so weird. Let me, let me mock this and see what, you know, what strange things these different and other people are doing. You're looking for the common humanity in them as opposed to looking for what's different.
Steph:
Exactly.
Steph:
Yeah.
Steph:
You mentioned the pearl moment earlier. And when Olan gave over her pearl, she knew why. She knew what he was going to do with them. He was going to pay. It was Lotus at that time, Right. One of the slaves, prostitutes, concubines.
Tina:
She was a concubine, but she started out as a prostitute. Yeah.
Steph:
So he's going to use that to pay for more time with her. And she knew what was happening and she was resistant and I, I felt myself cheering her on and not giving the pearls over. And I felt the. The intensity of knowing that it's no longer you. He likes somebody else. Or that. That kind of basic.
Tina:
Yeah.
Steph:
Emotion I felt for her. And I had to kind of press pause and walk away for a minute and be like, oh, I can't believe he just did that.
Tina:
Yeah.
Steph:
Like a good drama.
Tina:
Yes. No, it really was. Yes. In the movie that can, you know.
Steph:
Yeah, I don't want to watch the movie now.
Tina:
No, don't. Again, enough. I don't understand why no one's remade that movie.
Steph:
Right. Well, they should make it now.
Tina:
Make it right now.
Steph:
Yeah.
Steph:
Okay. Anybody who's listening, who's the filmmaker?
Steph:
There you go. I have an extra question from an extra voice, an extra wonderful bookish expat in Shanghai, Shannon, who has been a guest, actually, on the GeoPats podcast. She was on the Expat Rewind show.
Speaker F
Oh, gosh.
Steph:
When we first started that one in, I want to say, 2018. So if you dig into Expat Rewind, you can find Shannon's blog post. She read and reflected on a blog post that she wrote about Shanghai when she first moved here. Anyway, Shannon read the Good Earth and she had some questions for Tina. So thanks to WeChat, I have their questions and answers to each other. So here we go.
Steph:
How do you think books like the.
Steph:
Good Earth are still relevant for understanding.
Steph:
China today, even with all the rapid.
Steph:
Changes that have happened in the last many years?
Tina:
In terms of how relevant the Good Earth is today? I think it's partly in a large sense, because pearl box portraits of people were so nuanced and different. You get an idea that the Chinese are, in many ways, just like everyone else. So it's relevant in understanding that people are people, are people. And fundamentally, there really isn't a difference between them and us. And secondly, that, you know, the Chinese is. Is not an apt description. There is no one way that all Chinese think or are. And more specifically, I'm a big believer that you need to understand the past to understand the present. And a lot of what Pearl Buck portrays are the social issues of the day. So, for example, things like female infanticide, concubines, opium, foot binding, these don't exist. But understanding what they were and how deeply they were embedded in society, I think helps you understand the position of women today, how even after a revolution, there are still so few occupying the highest levels of leadership in government and in business. So looking at China as one entity and one unit. Wang Lung in Nanjing doesn't feel any affinity to the city. He feels much more of an affinity to his own village. When he hears a young man in the city speaking about revolution, it never occurs to him that this man is talking to him. And so similarly, you can say that people have regional differences. And because you understand Shanghai or Beijing doesn't necessarily mean that you understand Guangzhou or Xi'. An. So I think that that's important and relevant today as well. And there are also several issues, interestingly, in the book that are still things that are being dealt with in Chinese society today.
Steph:
Are there any misconceptions that you think people might have when they are thinking.
Steph:
About China or coming to visit China.
Tina:
Based on reading books like the Good Earth?
Tina:
I would say perhaps the sense of how much of rural China there is, because this book primarily talks of rural.
Tina:
China and also how many of the.
Tina:
Old traditions still exist. Many of those ceased to exist a long time ago. Some of them have come back, but in a different form. But I think that there's a very real sense when you read the book that if this is your portrait of China, that it's a very rural place with ancient traditions that most people still follow.
Steph:
Again, thank you to Shannon and Tina for sending those messages via WeChat so we could add them to this interview.
Steph:
What did you think about the ending of the book?
Tina:
Well, you know, in. In many ways, it flowed very naturally. You know, he's coming to the end of his days, the sons are in a different place, and it's not. And I felt sad because, you know, you know, it's not gonna be the same when he's gone.
Steph:
Definitely not.
Tina:
And perhaps the other thing that resonated with me when I read it first time is that, you know, Pearl Buck, who's always said, I'm Chinese and I'm American, I always, you know, never wanted to pick where I was from. I think this also, you know, really resonated with me. Both the book that, you know, somebody who was not Chinese could write something like this, and also that she felt that she did not have to have to choose where she was from and she could write what she wanted.
Steph:
When people say, where are you from? What do you say?
Tina:
It depends on who's asking and if they really want to know. Most people I say Singapore because that's my passport country. But if they seem like they actually want to know, then I will tell them that I'm from Singapore, but I grew up in the US My family is originally from Sri Lanka. And if they are really interested, then I tell them and identify with all those places. I'm not going to pick one.
Steph:
And we shouldn't have to.
Tina:
We should not have to. And I think, you know, the thing is, every generation feels like they're the first ones to deal with it. But if you think about it, missionaries and settlers have been around for hundreds of years. You know, Pearl Buck was dealing with it. And because she wrote, we know about it. You know, there were settlers and colonialists. You know, if you go to, like, the cemeteries and in colonies everywhere, you see all these, you know, families, children who died of, you know, some horrible tropical disease. And, you know, they were all. Their parents thought of themselves as British, French, whatever, but they were raised by the Amahs and the nannies and, you know, they identified from more than one country. And I think also about, you know, things like the Secret Garden. Did you read the Secret Garden?
Steph:
No. Sadly.
Tina:
Well, the beginning of the book is this little girl in India because her parent, who is wandering around this empty house because everybody has died of yellow fever. And then she gets taken to her uncle's in Yorkshire, and it's about the Secret Garden there. But the beginning always struck me because we never talk about India after that, because it was a place that you went to and you were in your bubble. And even for the narrator, you know, it's not important. You're English, so, you know, you go back to England and you become English. But, you know, this girl was I 10 or 11 when she goes. And we don't address that at all, but that was the bit that always fascinated me. I mean, let's talk about her Indian childhood and what Indian languages did she speak? But I think. I think it is people and places needs to put you in a box. You have to be from somewhere.
Steph:
But a box has many sides. That's the thing that annoys me, is we don't have to be in it. We can be all around it.
Tina:
Or as my son says, why do we even have a box?
Steph:
Right. Well, yeah. I mean, that's the smartest answer to all of that, is there doesn't need to be. Be a box. Actually, there's a lot of positives to being exposed and identifying and connecting with many different cultures. And yet it. It just feels like we have to.
Tina:
Pick one, because I think. I think a lot of people can't visualize what it's like to have more than one, and they. They're not comfortable. I think it comes from other people's discomfort.
Steph:
I do understand that, but there's plenty of experiences that most of us won't have, and it doesn't mean we have to.
Tina:
We would discount them existing, which is why we read.
Steph:
Right, right, Exactly. Empathy. Oh, what was I doing? Dylan Marin, who does the podcast conversations with people who hate me. I watched his Ted Talk yesterday. I was on a TED Talk yesterday, apparently, and I watched. Empathy does not mean endorsement. You can understand and feel for someone's situation without taking it on as your own. It doesn't mean you. You agree, you want it, you agree that you approve of it. It's just you acknowledge somebody else is having a different experience than you. And so ultimately, your son's right. The box doesn't need to exist. But it does.
Tina:
Yeah, it does. So, you know, it's our job to, you know, fight our way out of it.
Steph:
We are, and we're. We're trying that one episode at a time, kind of. You read a lot about China. If we narrow it down to maybe the top three or four books that you think would be approachable for people outside of China and listeners, I'll put these all in the show notes for you, so don't worry.
Tina:
So I'd have to say of contemporary books, Frank Langfit's Shanghai Free Taxi and Rob Schmitz's street of Eternal Happiness are, you know, two really super duper ones. Helen Zia's Last Boat out of Shanghai, Claire Chow and Isabel Chow's Remembering Shanghai. Isn't that a beautiful, beautiful book?
Steph:
Yes.
Tina:
And literally physically beautiful as well. And then going back into history, there is a memoir by a woman named Edna Leigh Booker called News Is My Job. She was here in the. I think she arrived in the 20s and was here until the 40s and was a journalist. And because she was a journalist, she took super good notes. And her book is lively and exciting and just contemporaneous to what Shanghai was like in the 1930s. Emily Han, China to Me.
Steph:
Okay, okay, we're going way over, so we'll cap it there and know that there's a lot more, folks. There's a lot more.
Tina:
So we are starting a historic Shanghai book club, mostly because people always ask us, what should I read to understand Shanghai history? And the answer is, oh, but there isn't just one book. There are so many books because there's so many aspects of it. And if you consider modern Shanghai history to be the 1840s, to say, even the 1970s, that's a lot of stuff. So the idea is that this would address that and be a mix of memoirs, fiction and history. So some will be really fun, light reads, some will be a little bit heavier and more like history focused, but hopefully different. And some from the period. Some of those contemporaneous memoirs which have been republished, some modern sort of studies, or like Helen Zia's Last Boat out of Shanghai and Claire and Isabel Child's Remembering Shanghai. Books like those which are looking back, but written in the current, current period.
Steph:
When is the first book club meeting?
Tina:
It will be in September, probably late September. We'll have, we'll have that on the site and, and in the WeChat group. And we'll have a separate, like WeChat group, blah, blah.
Steph:
Please add me to that group.
Tina:
I will, I will.
Steph:
There's rumor of a podcast.
Tina:
There is, yes. You are allowed to announce it because, you know, something's got to get us moving.
Steph:
What are you going to cover in the podcast?
Tina:
So we are going to cover several different things. I mean, we're hoping to do interviews. Lots of interesting people writing about historic Shanghai. So we'll do that. We'll also cover things that are on our blog. So, you know, certain areas. We'll go into the history of certain places that we've cover on walks and things like that. Mostly it will be, I think, interviews, but that is also dependent on, you know, people that we can get to interview.
Steph:
Of course. Yep. I totally understand that. If other snooze want to contact you in any way, shape or form to tell you how wonderful they thought this interview was or if they want to.
Tina:
Only if they want to do that.
Steph:
Or find out more about historic Shanghai, where should they contact?
Tina:
So they can go to Historic Shanghai website, which is historic-shanghai.com and there's an email there that they can.