Rice

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent and terrifying
Review: I just finished this book last night and it is going to take me a while to recover from the feelings and images I experienced while reading it. It is safe to say that not a single character in this book is exempt from greed, depravity, and brutality. The prose is absolutely stunning and the translation from Chinese to English is done with great finesse; the juxtaposition of such beautiful writing with horrific events and behavior is even more intriguing. I found myself searching for any small spark of compassion or kindness or noble courage in the characters and those instances did exist, albeit in small quantities! The reader must work at finding redeeming qualities in the mostly loathsome characters. I was heartened to read one passage near the end, in which Five Dragons' wife states that she never really was afraid of him. Looking back, I realize that she indeed was one of the few people who did not fear him. She saw him for who he was, but she did not overtly ever try to harm him. Perhaps she was as close to a redeeming character as can be found in this startling, brutal, poetic book.

Rating:
Summary: Man's Inhumanity to Man
Review: Many novels celebrate the triumph of the human spirit. Su Tong has chosen to give the reader a view of the fate of the individuals who haven't the strength of character to prevail. Five Dragons begins his saga as a starving refugee from his impoverished rural home. The city is a hostile environment for which he is no match, in 1930's China before the invasion of the Japanese. Five Dragons cajoles his way into a menial job at The Great Swan Rice Emporium, owned by Proprieter Feng and his two daughters, Cloud Weave and Cloud Silk. The most attractive daughter, Cloud Weave, becomes pregnant and the paternity of the child is in question. She has been receiving the favors of Sixth Master, a wealthy extortionist who takes protection money from shopowners. But Cloud Weave is also receiving night visits from one of Sixth Master's Wharf Rats. Five Dragons, most despised by Proprieter Feng and his daughters, agrees to marry the pregnant daughter. His subsequent denigration as a human being is the result of the direction his life has taken until this point. The child is born resembling Sixth Master and is taken away along with his mother, who will now become Sixth Master's Fifth Concubine. So Five Dragons takes the other sister as wife. The two sons of this bitter union are as emotionally and morally crippled as their parents. This hopeless scenario plays out as would be expected under such circumstances, ending with Five Dragon's imminent death from venereal disease. His lifelong obsession with rice limits his own life into a small space, as well as those of his family. It is a harsh portrait of the truth of a brutal existence, and the author does not flinch from his reality.

Rating:
Summary: Real talent
Review: Rice is a great book. The characters have such depth and the storyline is awesome. Su Tong never fails his readers. This is one of my favorite books.

Rating:
Summary: Food of the Gods
Review: Su Tong is a masterful writer. I was first drawn to his works after seeing the movie "Raise the Red Lantern." I read that book and soon after bought _Rice_, but for some reason I let _Rice_ sit on one of my bookshelves for over two years. I finally decided to picj it up, and boy am I glad I did.

The book follows the life of Five Dragons. An Orphen from a rural locale called Maple Poplar village. He probably would have never left the village if it hadn't been completely flooded. We are first introduced to Five Dragons when he jumps from a train and into the Big City. He soon meets one of his many enemies Abao, and after waking up nearly frozen, Five Dragons makes his way to a rice seller, where he settles down to make the lives of everyone he touches miserable.

When I first started reading the book, I thought that Five Dragons was a character to cheer for. I wanted this bumpkin to make good in the gig city. Su Tong's flipped my ideas. Five Dragons does well, but at the expense of others. He is cruel, abusive, and at the drop of the hat will have someone killed. He broke his own son's leg, but his son had just killed his sister. His son was ten at the time.

This is a really good book, and should be read by all who want a glimpse at 20's-30's China.

Rating:
Summary: Food of the Gods
Review: Su Tong is a masterful writer. I was first drawn to his works after seeing the movie "Raise the Red Lantern." I read that book and soon after bought _Rice_, but for some reason I let _Rice_ sit on one of my bookshelves for over two years. I finally decided to picj it up, and boy am I glad I did.

The book follows the life of Five Dragons. An Orphen from a rural locale called Maple Poplar village. He probably would have never left the village if it hadn't been completely flooded. We are first introduced to Five Dragons when he jumps from a train and into the Big City. He soon meets one of his many enemies Abao, and after waking up nearly frozen, Five Dragons makes his way to a rice seller, where he settles down to make the lives of everyone he touches miserable.

When I first started reading the book, I thought that Five Dragons was a character to cheer for. I wanted this bumpkin to make good in the gig city. Su Tong's flipped my ideas. Five Dragons does well, but at the expense of others. He is cruel, abusive, and at the drop of the hat will have someone killed. He broke his own son's leg, but his son had just killed his sister. His son was ten at the time.

This is a really good book, and should be read by all who want a glimpse at 20's-30's China.

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent and terrifying
Review: Su Tong's novel Rice (translated effectively by Howard Goldblatt) is a riveting read with unforgettable scenes of cruelty. The author peoples the book with vivid characters caught in a struggle for survival within a family that is of the take-no-prisoners variety that in lesser hands would come off as simply melodramatic but Su Tong is an inventive and skilled storyteller who layers the narrative and events to create a small epic. Hunger pervades all the actions of the book, whether for rice or sex or revenge (and sometimes all three), as a symbol for this turning point in Chinese history before the Communist take over. This is a short exciting literary ride that will reward any reader brave and lucky enough to begin the journey.

Rating:
Summary: Riveting and Cruel
Review: Su Tong's novel Rice (translated effectively by Howard Goldblatt) is a riveting read with unforgettable scenes of cruelty. The author peoples the book with vivid characters caught in a struggle for survival within a family that is of the take-no-prisoners variety that in lesser hands would come off as simply melodramatic but Su Tong is an inventive and skilled storyteller who layers the narrative and events to create a small epic. Hunger pervades all the actions of the book, whether for rice or sex or revenge (and sometimes all three), as a symbol for this turning point in Chinese history before the Communist take over. This is a short exciting literary ride that will reward any reader brave and lucky enough to begin the journey.

Rating:
Summary: A tragic family epic, but some incredible translation issues
Review: This moving tale is about a country orphan who goes to the city to seek his fortune. With a cunning bravado, he fakes his way into a rice dealer's son-less family and slowly takes over business and both daughters. An important read as the American novel marketplace has only a few written by a native male Chinese.

At the gateway to the city, the protagonist is attacked by the city's stevedore gang, which portends his future. The rice dealer uses the gang to also buy up his competition and protects his shipments. He also ruthlessly gets involved with a gang, initially to avenge his greeting, and eventually ends up as a Godfather. He rules the neighborhood, continues ruthlessly extracting protection money, and assuring his rice supply.

The story has all that can be imagined happening in the decadent Shanghai. Covers three generations and how each member of the family ends up in violent tragedy. Primarily a book on a patriarch's (read: man's) perspective to violence, depravity and frailties of a harsh side of Chinese family life set during the 1930s.

Since the story is written by a Shanghai area (Suzhou) native, who majored in Chinese lit at a Beijing university, and remains in the Shanghai (Nanjing) area, I assume that it is the skill of the translator in portraying appropriate vignettes and modifies storylines as he sees fit if he feels that the author's intent is not understandable by an American reader.

The Jewish American translator writes a fast moving story using modern American idiom. He keeps the reader moving through the story with many stereotypically Chinese descriptions, character thoughts, and appropriate quips of philosophy of life's fate. Probably something that every Chinese American has heard at one time or another.

While the story unifies the role of rice as the staff of life, consider this book primarily as entertainment. If you think that you will learn something about pre-Communist Chinese culture and modern post-Communist Chinese thought, the Jewish translator really does NOT credibly describe the intimate details of Chinese behavior, habits, and mannerisms. For example, I just can't imagine popping raw rice in one's mouth, like sunflower seeds. How about sleeping directly on a loose pile of rice? Why not on several loosely packed bags of rice like a beanbag chair. I think not. Also forcing rice up a woman's vagina is a bit of a stretch as a credible method of a Chinese man's marking of trophy women.

Nor will you learn much about rice quality although quality is mentioned often. He talks casually about the smell of raw rice, but doesn't talk much about the smell of cooked boiled rice, fried rice, round sticky rice in tea leaves and rice desserts, other than burned rice. And he doesn't cover different rice varieties having different scents and flowery bouquets (eg, Thai jasmine), what is it like with spring vs autumn rice, milled vs brown, new rice vs old, nor black or broken rice. Never read anything about the rice paddy planting and harvesting or visiting a rice mill.

However, the translator does much better in interpreting types of Chinese behavior that appears common to Jewish behavior, such as, using other people's money, gold teeth, hiding money boxes, buy low and sell high, talking to the neighborhood via a monolog from the rooftop, etc.

In comparison, I would recommend more highly Amy Tan's books for more accurate and sensitive portrait of Chinese culture, but with a matriarch's view of family.