Nǐ Hǎo
Dreaming of China? We've compiled our favorite library resources and web links for a virtual travel experience. Happy journey!
Image by DesignNPrint from Pixabay
Streaming Films Set in China
- 11 Flowers
Beautifully performed by a troupe of child actors, and vividly creating a sense of time and place, 11 Flowers is a delicate and moving film about growing up in a time of great upheaval. - Coming Home
Lu (Chen Daoming) and Feng (Gong Li) are a devoted couple forced to separate when Lu is arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner during the Cultural Revolution. When Lu is released years later, he returns home to find his beloved wife has amnesia and remembers little of her past. Unable to recognize him, she still patiently awaits her husband's return. A stranger within his own family, Lu is determined to awaken his wife's memory through gentle displays of unconditional and eternal love. - Curse of the Golden Flower
Set in the lavish and breathtakingly colorful world hidden from the eyes of mere mortals behind the walls of the Forbidden City, a tale of a royal family divided against itself builds to a mythic climax as lines are crossed, trust is betrayed, and family blood is spilled in the quest for redemption and revenge. - Dangerous Games
Featuring Hong Kong stars Eric Tsang and Gigi Leung and acclaimed Mainland actor Xia Yu (Electric Shadows), this film was promoted as a New Year's comedy and was a big hit with both audiences and critics alike. - San Qiang Pai An Jing Qi = A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
Wang is a miserable yet cunning noodle shop owner in a desert town in China. Feeling neglected, Wang's wife secretly goes out with Li, one of his employees. A timid man, Li reluctantly keeps the gun the landlady bought for '˜killing her husband later'. However, not a single move they make escapes the boss's notice, and he decides to bribe patrol officer Zhang to kill the illicit couple. - Tears of the Goddess
While honoring the memory of her mother, a young girl recalls her story of a tragic, secret love, destroyed by intellectuals of the cultural revolution.
Fiction Books Set in China
The Dragon and the Pearl by Call Number: eAudiobookFormer Emperor's consort Ling Suyin is renowned for her beauty. She lives quietly alone until the most ruthless warlord in the region steals her away, intent on uncovering her mystery without falling under her spell.
Empress Orchid by Call Number: Print, eAudiobookThe critically acclaimed author, Anchee Min, paints a fresh portrait of the last Chinese empress in this brilliantly fictionalized tale set during the waning days of the empire.
Kinfolk: A Novel of China by Call Number: eBookFour Chinese-American siblings make an emotional journey to their ancestral home in this novel from the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Good Earth.
A Map of Betrayal by Call Number: eAudiobookFrom the award-winning author of Waiting: a spare, haunting tale of espionage and conflicted loyalties that spans half a century in the entwined histories of two countries-China and the United States-and two families as it explores the complicated terrain of love and honor.
Pearl of China by Call Number: Print, eAudiobookAn internationally best-selling author, Anchee Min draws upon her Chinese heritage to pen lush historical epics. Here she transports listeners to the Far East for a fictionalized account of acclaimed author Pearl Buck's youth. Arriving in late 19th-century China with her missionary parents, Buck is soon fascinated by her new home and strikes up a friendship with a young Chinese girl named Willow. The two become inseparable even as civil war, failed relationships, and world conflicts threaten all they hold dear.
Red Sorghum by Call Number: PrintSpanning three generations, this novel of family and myth is told through a series of flashbacks that depict events of staggering horror set against a landscape of gemlike beauty, as the Chinese battle both Japanese invaders and each other in the turbulent 1930s.
Soul Mountain by Call Number: Print, eAudiobookFacing time on a prison farm for defying his country's laws of cultural conformity, artist/writer Gao Xingjian embarked on an epic search for his roots and for freedom. His journey through Southern China's ancient mountains and forests, inspired this immensely wise and beautiful novel.
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Call Number: Print, eAudiobookA powerful story about a family, separated by circumstances, culture, and distance, Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little known region and its people and celebrates the bond that connects mothers and daughters.
