{"id":27045,"date":"2016-09-02T09:44:46","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T21:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nzcfs.adminmouse.co.nz\/?p=27045"},"modified":"2016-09-03T05:09:01","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T17:09:01","slug":"the-porcelain-thief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/the-porcelain-thief\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Porcelain Thief"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-27107 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/The-Porcelain-Thief-258x395.jpg\" alt=\"The Porcelain Thief\" width=\"258\" height=\"395\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/The-Porcelain-Thief-258x395.jpg 258w, https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/The-Porcelain-Thief-150x230.jpg 150w, https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/The-Porcelain-Thief-229x350.jpg 229w, https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/The-Porcelain-Thief-275x420.jpg 275w, https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/The-Porcelain-Thief-640x979.jpg 640w, https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/The-Porcelain-Thief-681x1042.jpg 681w, https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/The-Porcelain-Thief.jpg 1046w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 258px) 100vw, 258px\" \/>The Porcelain Thief: Searching the Middle Kingdom for Buried China,\u00a0<\/strong>by Huan Hsu. \u00a0Fourth Estate, London, 2015. ISBN978-0-00-747943-6<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Chinese-American journalist travels throughout mainland China and Taiwan in search of his family\u2019s hidden treasure and comes to understand his ancestry as he never has before.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In 1938, when the Japanese arrived in Huan Hsu\u2019s great-great-grandfather Liu\u2019s Yangtze River hometown of Xingang, Liu was forced to bury his valuables, including a vast collection of prized antique porcelain, and undertake a decades-long trek that would splinter the family over thousands of miles. Many years and upheavals later, Hsu, raised in Salt Lake City and armed only with curiosity, moves to China to work in his uncle\u2019s semiconductor chip business. \u00a0Once there, a conversation with his grandmother, his last living link to dynastic China, ignites a desire to learn more about not only his lost ancestral heirlooms but also porcelain itself. \u00a0Mastering the language enough to venture into the countryside, Hsu sets out to separate the layers of fact and fiction that have obscured both China and his heritage and finally complete his family\u2019s long march back home.<\/p>\n<p>Melding memoir, travelogue, and social and political history, <em>The Porcelain Thief<\/em> offers an intimate and unforgettable way to understand the complicated events that have defined China over the past two hundred years and provides a revealing, lively perspective on contemporary Chinese society from the point of view of a Chinese American coming to terms with his hyphenated identity.<\/p>\n<p>Book review from: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/18525763-the-porcelain-thief\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/18525763-the-porcelain-thief<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Porcelain Thief: Searching the Middle Kingdom for Buried China,\u00a0by Huan Hsu. \u00a0Fourth Estate, London, 2015. ISBN978-0-00-747943-6 A Chinese-American journalist travels throughout mainland China and Taiwan in search of his family\u2019s hidden treasure and comes to understand his ancestry as he never has before. In 1938, when the Japanese arrived in Huan Hsu\u2019s great-great-grandfather Liu\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":27113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27045"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nzchinasociety.org.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}