Huan Hsu

So, my enjoyment of this memoir comes from a weird point of view. Yes, I enjoy the history of an heirloom, the journey to track it down, and the historical background that surrounds it. I had really liked The Hare With The Amber Eyes. But also, as someone who has read a bit of Sci-fi and also loves to watch Sci-fi- this was great. In a lot of Sci-fi China is a big part of the environment. Its borders have stretched and it encompasses a large part of the world. The culture is prominent in many of these fictional future Earths. That being the case, it was fascinating to read Huan Hsu's experience in that country. His descriptions of the crowded cities and the even smaller areas of the country mirrored many of the worldsI have read/watched. There were just so many factors to make this book a great read.
Huan Hsu chronicles his journey to unearth his family's porcelain, said to have been buried during WW2. The treasure was then lost during China's Cultural Revolution. Although the surviving family members can't agree to what was owned and what became of the porcelain, Huan Hsu'S journey to for the truth has given him some great stories.
He learns his family's history and discovers a China he was completely unprepared for.… (mehr)

This is a personal story but also a rendering of thousands of years of the history of China. I learned a lot about porcelain making and the Chinese dynasties and also the more recent history of China as it affected this one family.
Huan Hsu is an ABC, that is an American-Born Chinese. His parents grew up in Taiwan but moved to the USA to pursue post-secondary schooling and stayed to work in Utah which is where Huan grew up. Huan’s grandmother stayed in Taiwan and then moved to Shanghai with Huan’s uncle Richard who owned a company that made computer chips. One day in the US Huan saw an exhibit of Chinese porcelain and was fascinated by it. He mentioned it to his father who said that Huan’s mother’s family used to have a big collection of porcelain before the Communist takeover. He learned that his great-great grandfather had been a scholar and landlord in Xingang. During the Second World War his grandfather had to flee from the approaching Japanese soldiers with only what he and the family with him could carry. They buried the porcelain and a great deal of silver deep in the ground. Although the family returned after the Japanese were defeated there was such turmoil between the Republicans, lead by Chiang Kai-Shek, and the Communists, led by Mao, that it never seemed safe to unearth the buried treasure. The great-great grandfather was 80 years old when the Communists took control of China. As a landlord he was persecuted and stripped of all his landholdings. He continued to live in a small outbuilding on the land but died soon after. The people who knew about the porcelain never had a chance to return or it was never safe to do so. Huan’s grandmother was quite elderly when Huan started his investigation but he decided to move to Shanghai to be able to talk to her about her grandfather’s home and porcelain collection. To do this he had to take a job in his uncle’s business and learn to speak Mandarin. Little by little he accumulated information as he talked to elderly relatives and travelled to places in China and Taiwan. This is the story of his search and what he found.
Although I found the book fascinating there were a few things I would have changed if I was an editor. Firstly, there were several stories that were repeated throughout the book. Once would have been enough to hear about the glaze makers’ attempts to make a deep red glaze. Also, some pictures would have been nice.… (mehr)

An informative mix of travelogue, history, and memoir by a Chinese man, born in the US, looking for the fine porcelain that his great grandfather was said to have buried when the Japanese army invaded China in 1938.

Huan Hsu was the son of Chinese parents who had migrated to the United States. After working for a time as a journalist, he became interested in family stories about his great great grandfather, a wealthy landowner in China, who had buried his collection of valuable porcelain in his garden as the Japanese advanced into his country. Although Hsu had not previous been interested in his Chinese heritage, he decided to accept a job with a rich uncle who owned a large factory near Shanghai in order to search for the porcelain. For three years, he worked in China, traveling around the country interviewing relatives and others whom he hoped would help in his quest. In the process, he learned about China’s history and the present social conditions there.

The Porcelain Thief is an enjoyable, rambling account of Hsu’s time in China and what he learned about the country’s past and present. He uses his journalistic skills to weave together various elements of the story; his own search for information, his family’s personal experiences during World War II and the Communist era, and basic history of China in the twentieth century. He makes generalizations about the Chinese language and how and why being Chinese continues to carry weight for him. In addition, he relates his growing knowledge of history of Chinese porcelain, the museums where he saw it, and the disrupted fields where he and others collected its shards. He goes to live in Jingdezhen, the city on central China that was the center of porcelain production.

Hsu provides solid, relatively neutral historical information about Chinese history. Knowing little about the subject, I appreciated his account 0f major historical events and how they affected ordinary people in a variety of ways. He seems to present basic historical scholarship, although his dismal assessment of Cixi, the last empress of China, contradicts the more positive recent biography of her by Jung Chang. (See my review) Like his great great grandfather, Hsu felt no allegiance to the traditional emperors, the Nationalists of Chaing Kai-Shek, or Communists. At the local level, he observes that whoever ruled created chaos and destruction for those they ruled. Although he discusses economic change, his book is not framed by the conflicting views of communism and capitalism.

As Hsu traveled around China, he observed the cities and countryside, writing brief sharp accounts of what he saw. Often he supplements these with information about the changes brought by recent government policies. Recent building has meant the destruction of historical sites. In addition, the stories of his relatives and the individuals he happened to meet, he reveals how varied the experiences of World War II, Civil War, and Communist rule had been. Visiting Taiwan, he notes its particular mix of high regard for China’s traditional culture and westernization. Individuals experienced national events differently, often randomly, because of where they were at the time.

Looking for the buried porcelain and collecting porcelain shards leads Hsu to think about history and how it is preserved. He gradually moves beyond a simple desire to own his great grandfather’s porcelain to appreciate its larger meaning. '"Corporeal beings eventually leave the world. Places persist under the capricious rule of the bulldozer. Stories—of my family, of bygone China—don’t have to die. Even their fragments can be reassembled."

That is exactly what Hsu does in this book.… (mehr)

What a fascinating memoir involving a family myth resulting in the quest to ascertain the legitimacy of that myth. Along the journey, author, Huan Hsu, discovers his family's history through the memories of aging relatives. He explores Chinese culture through living, working and traveling within China and through conversations with many who have endured the myriad of revolutions encountered over the last few generations.
Hsu, is a gifted writer whose vivid descriptions of the lanscape and his encounters place the reader directly alongside him. The historic detail of the Chinese porcelain trade is thorough and fascinating. The recounting of the Japanese invasion and the actions of corrupt leaders through various revolutions was factual and yet, disturbing.
The presumed vast treasures of the family's buried porcelain and coin were highly valued by Hsu's great-great-grandfather and represented his tangible legacy for his family. However, it appears that education is an equally important legacy of Hsu's great-great-grandfather as he made sure that daughters were as well educated as sons. Sadly, the cultural revolution, as noted in the story, penalized those who were educated and the gift was deemed a curse and could often threatened one's existence. Survival seemed all that mattered.
I am grateful to author, Huam Hsu, and LibraryThing Early Reviewers for having provided a free copy of an uncorrected proof of this book and hope that the abrupt ending was somehow eased before final publication.… (mehr)