The Great Flowing River - by Chi Pang-Yuan (Hardcover)

About the Book

Heralded as a literary masterpiece and a best-seller in the Chinese-speaking world, The Great Flowing River is a personal account of the history of modern China and Taiwan unlike any other. The noted scholar, writer, and teacher Chi Pang-yuan recounts her youth in mainland China and adulthood in Taiwan in a novelistic, epoch-defining narrative.

Book Synopsis

Heralded as a literary masterpiece and a best-seller in the Chinese-speaking world, The Great Flowing River is a personal account of the history of modern China and Taiwan unlike any other. In this eloquent autobiography, the noted scholar, writer, and teacher Chi Pang-yuan recounts her youth in mainland China and adulthood in Taiwan. Chi's remarkable life, told in rich and striking detail, humanizes the eventful and turbulent times in which she lived.

The Great Flowing River begins as a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of China's war with Japan. Chi depicts her childhood in pre-occupation Manchuria and gives an eyewitness account of life in China during the war with Japan. She tells the tale of her youthful romance with a dashing pilot that ends tragically when he is shot down in the last days of the war. The book describes the deepening political divide in China and her choice to take a job in Taiwan, where she would remain after the Communist victory. Chi details her growth as an educator, scholar, and promoter of Chinese literature in translation and her realization that despite her roots in China, she has found a home in Taiwan, giving an immersive account of the postwar history of Taiwan from a mainlander's perspective. A novelistic, epoch-defining narrative, The Great Flowing River unites the personal and intimate with the grand sweep of history.

Review Quotes

The Great Flowing River is a compelling account of life in a war zone, the perils of mass migrations and all the artifices of revolution.--Paoi Wilmer "Cha: An Asian Literary Journal"

A bestseller in Chinese, and here translated by John Balcom, The Great Flowing River takes an extensive look at a transitional time in Chinese and Taiwanese history, especially when it comes to education and literature.-- "Asian Review of Books"

A personal memoir set against the history of modern China and Taiwan. . . . From coming of age during China's war with Japan to her eventual move to Taiwan, Chi's story remains both intimate and historically connected.-- "World Literature Today"

An engaging read for those interested in memoir, 20th-century Chinese and Taiwanese history, and Chinese culture.-- "Library Journal"

An inspiring life story of unvanquished resilience.-- "Kirkus Reviews"

The autobiography is highly readable, with all the historical ups and downs delivered in a clear, calm, and sensitive voice. John Balcom, a seasoned and award-winning translator of Chinese literature, has rendered the original text in an elegant flow of English with his own creative touch. This authentic and powerful biography will be a good read for any scholar or general reader who is interested in modern East Asian history, literature and culture, or women's experience in a non-Western context. Scholars who work on the Chinese Northeast, the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Party, or modern Taiwanese history and literature will find the book particularly helpful. In addition, the book or excerpted chapters would be useful as an assigned text for classes on modern East Asia.--Miya Xie "China Review International"

This is a memoir of epic proportions. Chi's work is a testimony of this tremendous historical period that is the long twentieth century for the Chinese and the Taiwanese peoples. The English translation of this epochal memoir is most certainly significant.--Letty Chen, author of Writing Chinese: Reshaping Chinese Cultural Identity

The Great Flowing River is a grand memoir. It tells a story of loss, suffering, fortitude, and the nobility of sacrifice. It is a personal narrative that reflects the fate of the Chinese nation, especially the fate of those who were driven away from their homeland and managed to survive elsewhere with integrity and dignity. There is a calmness and tremendous power in the wise narrative voice, whose resonance lingers long after the last page is turned.--Ha Jin, author of Waiting and other novels

The Great Flowing River is one of the great memoirs of modern China. Telling the story of one woman's odyssey through the twentieth century, this is not just a deeply moving account of Chi Pang-yuan and her family, but a window into how the Chinese people came through the trauma of war and turmoil, and created a new set of civilized values in their aftermath.--Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945

I don't know of any other memoir in English that is quite like this. It is of enormous significance because it adds so much for those with an interest in the Republic of China in both China and Taiwan.--J. Megan Greene, author of The Origins of the Developmental State in Taiwan: Science Policy and the Quest for Modernization

About the Author

Chi Pang-yuan (b. 1924) is an internationally recognized educator, scholar, and author. She is professor emeritus of English and comparative literature at National Taiwan University. She is coeditor of Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey (2000) and The Last of the Whampoa Breed: Stories of the Chinese Diaspora (Columbia, 2003), among other books.

John Balcom teaches at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. His Columbia University Press translations include Cao Naiqian's There's Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night (2009); Huang Fan's Zero and Other Fictions (2011); and Yang Mu's Memories of Mount Qilai: The Education of a Young Poet (2015).