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sweddy65's review against another edition
4.0
I was very happy to have won this book in a giveaway.
Set in the midst of the student uprising of 1989, this book weaves together culture (both urban and rural), politics, and love.
Gu Bao is not a participant in the Tiananmen Square protests, but is a keen observer of what is going on around her. She is in love with Tong, a soldier, despite the fact that her heart is with the protestors. When she becomes pregnant, her parents pressure her to have an abortion. She would not be able to continue with her studies in the law as a mother. She returns to her grandparents' village for the procedure and recovery.
Bao had spent time as a child in the village, but her life had changed. She is no longer comfortable in the rural life, but slowly finds her way through the differences and back to loving and appreciating her grandparents. She becomes entangled in the politics of the one-child policy, bringing food and company to a woman hiding out in the mountains because she is pregnant and wants to keep the child, despite already having a daughter.
The story is compelling, the characters nuanced and never exactly what they seem at first.
Set in the midst of the student uprising of 1989, this book weaves together culture (both urban and rural), politics, and love.
Gu Bao is not a participant in the Tiananmen Square protests, but is a keen observer of what is going on around her. She is in love with Tong, a soldier, despite the fact that her heart is with the protestors. When she becomes pregnant, her parents pressure her to have an abortion. She would not be able to continue with her studies in the law as a mother. She returns to her grandparents' village for the procedure and recovery.
Bao had spent time as a child in the village, but her life had changed. She is no longer comfortable in the rural life, but slowly finds her way through the differences and back to loving and appreciating her grandparents. She becomes entangled in the politics of the one-child policy, bringing food and company to a woman hiding out in the mountains because she is pregnant and wants to keep the child, despite already having a daughter.
The story is compelling, the characters nuanced and never exactly what they seem at first.
bwolfe718's review against another edition
4.0
Read my full review here: http://readherlikeanopenbook.com/2014/11/12/living-treasures-explores-love-against-a-backdrop-of-oppression-in-1989-china/
Yang Huang’s debut novel immerses readers in a time and place with which they may be somewhat familiar: China in 1989, just before and after the massacre of young protesters at Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
While it must have been tempting for Yang Huang to write an explicitly political novel about those people and events, she has instead chosen to focus on the love affair of an 18-year-old college student, Gu Bao, and a 22-year-old soldier, Tong, and the ramifications it has for their future. The political unrest serves as a foreboding backdrop for the domestic drama occurring first at Nanjing University and later in the Pingwu region of Sichuan province in mountainous central China.
...
The story develops in ways one wouldn’t necessarily expect and turns into something of a thriller in the final chapters. Bao, initially timid despite her academic and career ambitions, develops into a determined and spirited young woman who is willing to take on people and institutions she would have feared to challenge only months earlier.
Yang is equally adept at exploring the political situation, both at the political and personal levels, and capturing the texture of hardscrabble Chinese country life. She avoids heavy-handed polemics by depicting the effects of Chinese government policies on a handful of its citizens. As always, we experience the universal themes of oppression, resistance, and triumph through the particular instances of well-drawn characters, here Bao and Orchid. These are flesh and blood people, not mouthpieces for the author’s political harangues. Yang rightly keeps the plot focused on the human side of the nation-changing events taking place in the background of life-changing situations faced by the characters.
...
Yang Huang’s debut novel immerses readers in a time and place with which they may be somewhat familiar: China in 1989, just before and after the massacre of young protesters at Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
While it must have been tempting for Yang Huang to write an explicitly political novel about those people and events, she has instead chosen to focus on the love affair of an 18-year-old college student, Gu Bao, and a 22-year-old soldier, Tong, and the ramifications it has for their future. The political unrest serves as a foreboding backdrop for the domestic drama occurring first at Nanjing University and later in the Pingwu region of Sichuan province in mountainous central China.
...
The story develops in ways one wouldn’t necessarily expect and turns into something of a thriller in the final chapters. Bao, initially timid despite her academic and career ambitions, develops into a determined and spirited young woman who is willing to take on people and institutions she would have feared to challenge only months earlier.
Yang is equally adept at exploring the political situation, both at the political and personal levels, and capturing the texture of hardscrabble Chinese country life. She avoids heavy-handed polemics by depicting the effects of Chinese government policies on a handful of its citizens. As always, we experience the universal themes of oppression, resistance, and triumph through the particular instances of well-drawn characters, here Bao and Orchid. These are flesh and blood people, not mouthpieces for the author’s political harangues. Yang rightly keeps the plot focused on the human side of the nation-changing events taking place in the background of life-changing situations faced by the characters.
...
readmeanything_'s review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
emileereadsbooks's review
4.0
I do not normally like these slower contemporary stories that are described as sweeping. And I wouldn't choose to reread this one again. However, just because a book isn't for me doesn't mean it's a bad book. The characters have depth and are complicated. I loved and hated some of them page by page. This book gives a glimpse into the China of the 80s. It is an interesting social commentary on the policies of the Chinese government and the feelings surrounding the one child policy. Yet it never feels like an academic work, just a well written novel.
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