100 books like Pearl Buck in China

In 1929, Bernardine Szold Fritz, age 33, accepted a proposal of marriage that brought her to Shanghai. From the very beginning, I was intrigued. Why would a single Jewish woman hop a train to China to be with a fourth husband, a man she met briefly in Paris? While the marriage is a disappointment, Art Deco Shanghai is not. 

Like other Jewish women before her, she started a salon in her home and an International Arts Theater that saw the likes of Hollywood luminaries and famous names in the arts and politics. I was mesmerized by how Bernardine’s commitment to intellectual pursuits defied the fragile political situation that existed in Shanghai through the civil wars and the time period leading up to World War II. She brought creativity and joy to a city that would soon change forever.

I was totally engrossed in this story about brave, intelligent women in 15th-century China. Yuxian is trained to be a doctor by her grandmother within the constraints of traditional Chinese society. I was amazed by her ability to see past obstacles and challenges. I found myself holding my breath as she was confronted with unbelievable scenarios.

Like Yunxian herself, every woman in her circle, especially her lifelong friend Meiling, finds ways to rise to a higher plane within the limitations of arranged marriages and class prohibitions. Through friendship and purpose, this woman of the Ming dynasty left a remarkable legacy for generations to come.

I really enjoy moving through history in the context of the lives of women. Leap forward several centuries from the Ming Dynasty and women in China are still limited by tradition and binding their feet. Peony loves, and her love is returned by David ben Ezra, the son of a wealthy Jewish merchant. But Peony is a bondswoman, and while David struggles with the decision to marry his mother’s Jewish choice of bride or the beautiful Kueilan, she must observe from afar.

I loved how this book vividly illustrated, through the course of Peony’s life, how the blending and integration of Chinese and Jewish cultures led to the assimilation of the Kaifeng Jews. Peony embodies the shared respect and understanding between the communities. At the conclusion of the novel, Peony is an elderly Buddhist nun. Her end of life reflections indicate a keen awareness of what the blending of the… show more.

What I loved most about this book was how the story of World War II Shanghai was told by revealing secrets that were hidden for 70 years. Romy Bernfeld, a Jewish refugee in Shanghai, and Ho Li become closer than sisters. The journey through the hardships of World War II eventually tears them apart and creates a riveting page-turner of a novel.

I really appreciated Manning’s skill at paralleling the lives of Romy and her granddaughter, Alexandra, as Alexandra desperately searches for the truth behind her grandparents' wartime experiences.

Like the Tigers themselves, their granite-faced commander was much glorified during the war and afterward, but he was a man with flaws. Claire Chennault lied about his age, among other things, and it wasn’t until Martha Byrd thought to examine the family bible that the record was corrected. Hers is the only reliable biography of the man who forged the fighter group that defended Burma and China in the early days of the Pacific War.

An old army buddy of mine used to say that when he had trouble at work and was worried about being able to support his family and when life was beginning to be a little too much, he would pick up a copy of The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna. Soon, he’d be transported to the deck of the USS San Pablo, during the 1920s, steaming up the Yangtze River in the heart of China and suddenly everything was right.

McKenna was a sailor in the US Navy for 22 years (1931 to 1953). He enlisted at the age of 18 and was assigned to the “China fleet,” patrolling largely between Guam, Okinawa, and Japan. He served through World War II and the Korean War. After finally retiring, he went to school on the GI Bill and started to write. His first and only novel was The Sand Pebbles,… show more.

Incredible character development, fascinating history, and a story that takes place in one week, yet has enough action and details to fill several years. [This book is what inspired me to incorporate dates and/or times/locations in my chapter headings.] The story is set in Hong Kong in the early 1960s and the author’s understanding of the culture clash between the British who think they are in control and the Chinese who are using them, while making plans for their inevitable exit.

Absorbed by Chinese culture while a grad student in Hong Kong, Susan Blumberg-Kason is charmed into marriage with Cai, a PhD student of Taoist music from the Hubei Province backwater. Marital discord arises when the openhearted Midwesterner realizes her function as a wife is to produce a son, turn it over to his (not her) parents for upbringing, and get out of the way so the husband can carry on with his philandering and porn watching. But even as he molts his intellectual shell and his narcissistic monster emerges, Cai can also be sympathetically understood as a product of his culture. Intercultural conflict is what makes this fairy tale so readable and engrossing, with its timeless theme of the loving sweetheart enthralled and entrapped in her dark prince's perverted castle. What moved me most was Blumberg-Kason’s honesty in laying everything bare, at the risk of baring her own flaws.

As a young girl, I loved missionary stories about women like Gladys Aylward who left their comfortable homes and traveled to remote countries to tell people about Jesus.

In 1930, Gladys traveled across Siberia by train to a remote town in northwest China. There, as an independent missionary, she shared God’s love and stood up against time-honored traditions that were harming young girls. This book is full of adventure, and doesn’t shrink from stomach-wrenching details.

I’ll never forget the vivid descriptions of foot-binding, and how Gladys fearlessly confronted and corrected this painful procedure, no doubt impacting lives forever.

I know I said in my introduction that there are too many books from the missionary perspective and not enough from a Chinese point of view, but I’m going to make an exception here with the only novel, too, in the group. In this 1985 title, the extraordinary John Hersey captures the urge of American missionaries to proselytize in China, as well as their complicated relationship with Chinese Christians. This sweeping fictional biography of David Treadup, whose character is a composite of the lives of actual missionaries, including Hersey’s father, carries the reader from New York state in the early 1900s to the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s.