China Challenge
This is a reading challenge I certainly shouldn’t miss.
As far as I’m aware, my dad’s grandfather was a Chinese immigrant who married a Filipino so I have bit of Chinese blood in me. But unfortunately, my eyes and my family name are practically the only things that tie me to that heritage. Neither me nor my father was raised in Chinese tradition so I don’t speak the language, and the few things I know about the culture is based mostly on what I learn from others. So this is why I’m very interested in reading Chinese literature.
The China Challenge is hosted by Jennie of Biblio File and it runs from the beginning of September this year until September 1st next year. It has four different categories. The last category, the Silk Road Trek, involves reading ten books and engaging in some China-related activities. Quite interesting, don’t you think? That’s what I plan to take.
Reading ten Chinese-themed books in one year should be relatively easy, but I figured it’s also very easy for me to change my mind on what I want to read so I decided to list just five books for now and figure out the rest later. There’s also a big chance that a new and very interesting book would be released during the period of this challenge, so I better save a spot for that just in case. Anyway, here’s the first half of my list:
- * The Beijing of Possibilities by Jonathan Tel
- The Art of War (The Denma Translation) by Sun Tzu
- The Uninvited (aka The Banquet Bug) by Geling Yan
- Binu and The Great Wall by Su Tong
- Waiting by Ha Jin
(The ones with a star (*) are the ones that I finished.)
I’ve been hearing how amazing Lisa See is, so I’ll definitely be adding one of her works on my list. I just haven’t decided which one. Her new work Shanghai Girls sounds fantastic (thought apparently somewhat tragic), so that’s on my “to-be-bought” list and just might be the one I read for the challenge. Yiyun Lee’s works also sound very interesting.
I’ve actually been searching for a China-themed challenge for some time now, and interestingly, Mel of The Reading Life recently invited me to join this. A few days later, I got even more excited when I read Mee’s post for this challenge, which also talks about her Chinese roots. So now here I am writing this post.
If you’re reading this, I hope you join us too for the challenge. It’ll be an interesting year.
- September 9, 2009 / 9:37 pm
- Tags:
- Reading Challenge
Mark David 
I get what you mean by just wanting to read books on a whim. As somewhat of an impulsive person, I get that a lot (which is why I have a pile of unread books on my shelf). That’s what happened to my 
