This visualisation’s been on my list for a while now: Chinese ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ foods.
Click to download (JPEG)
The Chinese have an ancient way of classifying foods into ‘hot’, ‘warm’, ‘cool’ and ‘cold’ based on how you feel after you eat them. Watermelon is ‘cold’, for example, and chocolate is ‘hot’. It makes sense, really.
I plotted “temperatures” (in a Chinese sense) of common foods against their retail price in Coles supermarket, Australia. The results are really interesting.
It’s a bit cartoony. Feel free to use it as you wish. Enjoy 🙂
As simple a Chinese history as is possible to write. Needs a revamp. 255 pages, ★★★
Chinese history is notoriously complicated. There have been 83 dynasties (maybe 85) and 559 emperors (plus about 8 more “chairmen” since the 1911 revolution—but this is debatable), each with their own cultures, palaces and stories. As a civilisation, China enjoys the longest unbroken history on Earth. For five thousand years, dynasties followed the predictable cycle of “conquer-rise-prosper-decline” due to warfare, patriotism, tyranny and corruption, respectively. Dynasties often ruled simultaneously in different locations, particularly in the first half of China’s 5000-year history. With China’s vast population and its fondness of large governments, the number of influential people in China’s history is unfathomably large for most people. To confuse matters further, many important people and cities had several names, and the historical record was destroyed and re-written several times in the course of China’s 5000-year history.
China’s official history of the last 100 years alone comprises several tomes filled with tiny Chinese characters on wafer-thin bible-paper. To make an abridged version of the last 5000 years especially for children, therefore, is a remarkable feat. Adeline Yen Mah (whose other books I’ve reviewed here) writes beautifully and accurately in a way that captivates. She includes anecdotes to keep children interested, and peppers the book with editorials that keep young people’s moral compasses on track during scenes of violence or promiscuity.
This book lacked sufficient detail to make it interesting for me. Zheng He’s story is a really exciting one, but it was glossed over in just a few pages in this book. Only the Qing and Tang dynasties were written in sufficient detail for me. Despite its brevity, though, all the most important people and events were at least mentioned in this book.
Reading this book on an iPad, I found myself reimagining PDF as a real iBook specifically designed for the iPad. Chinese history is an exciting topic, and iBooks on the iPad lends itself wonderfully to the videos, animations, speeches and 3D relics that could help bring this colourful history to life. The current version, a black-and-white scanned PDF, seems very dated in 2013. This book needs a digital revamp.
China: Land of Dragons and Emperors was definitely less interesting than Watching the Tree for several reasons. As someone who reads almost every remotely-interesting book on the “China” shelf, particularly non-fiction, I already know most of what she’s writing. It’s also aimed at children, and I was reading it on an iPad with all its drawbacks. If only the book could be re-engineered to take full advantage of all the features the iPad can offer, this book would be very special indeed.
I recommend this book for young teenagers (aged 10-16) who already love reading but don’t yet know much about China. Its discontinuous, highly-chaptered structure lends itself well to reading in bed. (For those who already know a lot about China but don’t like reading so much, I recommend 1421 instead.) ★★★
Explains 1911 to 1989 in more political detail than you’ll ever need to know!
315 pages, ★★★
China Since 1911 is told from a purely political perspective. This book is a concise, authoritative historical account of the 1911 Nationalist revolution to the anti-reform protests of 1989. This period of history was one of China’s most tumultuous: warlords fought each other in the 1910s, the Nationalist regime collapsed into mini-states in the 1920s, Japan invaded in the 1930s, then World War II broke out in the 1940s. Widespread famine took root in the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution uprooted what little progress China had made in the 1960s, Mao’s death in the 1970s left China politically divided and spiritually lost, then anti-corruption protests spread across the nation from west to east in the 1980s, the most famous of which took place in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Only the last chapter of this book, when the dust starts to settle, does China show any signs of hope!
You’ll learn almost nothing about Chinese culture from this book. It documents the internal political struggles that gave rise to certain (crazy) decisions, but makes almost no comment on the social implications of those decisions. The text is littered with names of medium-level Chinese officials whom I’ll never remember. For a social history, I recommend reading Mao’s Last Dancer, Wild Swans or the soothing 窈窕淑女的标准（宋尚宫女论语研习报告）(Chinese) instead.
While China Since 1911 is extremely well-researched, there was not enough social emphasis for my liking. This book should be renamed China’s Political Leadership since 1911 instead.★★★
Alerts you to society’s irrational love of extroverts.
352 pages, ★★★★
Introverts are singled out from a young age. They’re considered shy, socially-inept, boring, lazy and stupid in schools—at least, that’s the first thesis of this book.
The second thesis is that introverts are actually more valuable than people think. Evidence suggests that their moral reasoning, sense of responsibility, ability to stick to a plan, empathetic skills and thoughtfulness are better than those of extroverts. Introverts also earn more scholarships and graduate degrees than do extroverts.
Extroverts, on the other hand, make rash decisions, engage in risky behaviour (both in bed and on the stock market), are more prone to “groupthink”, make unsatisfactory team leaders and have poor listening skills. They have empty charisma—that is, they might appear to have everything in control, but when questioned, we realise they know nothing.
The third thesis, at the end of this book, says that “introvert” and “extrovert” are actually over-simplistic labels, and the book suggests “high-sensitive” and “low-sensitive” as more appropriate alternatives. Studies by Jerome Kagan have shown that people with sensitive amygdala prefer lower levels of stimulus—quiet rooms, fewer people, and familiar settings—characteristics of ‘introversion’. People with less-sensitive amygdala prefer higher levels of stimulus—loud places, more people, and new experiences—characteristics of ‘extroversion’. Different people need different amounts of stimulus to be comfortable, and these levels are quite fixed from birth through to adulthood.
Genes play an ambiguous role. I have C/C at the rs752306 SNP, which is located in the DRD4 dopamine receptor gene on chromosome 11. Even though the C allele has a frequency of as high as 75% (meaning most people have it), people still got excited when a study by Lee et al. in 2011 hinted at connections between rs752306 SNP and ‘schizophrenia’ and ‘risky behaviour’—traits which this book interprets as ‘extraversion’. Lee’s follow-up study showed no connection whatsoever. Personally, I think we understand so little about how genes affect our health that we should ignore any supposed ‘genetic factors’ for personality traits.
This book separates society along a single axis and looks for striking differences. The Geography of Thought did that too, along East/West lines, as did Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, along gender lines. Take all these books with a pinch of salt. Society is not a dichotomy of extremes, but a melting pot in which most people are pretty close to ‘average’. Remember that you are, too. ★★★★
An uncomfortable, unforgettable, necessary read. 434 pages, ★★★★★
A Japanese-born woman in New York recalls her youth as a geisha in 1930s Japan.
Reading this, though, I learned more about the sex trade than about Japan.
Protagonist Chiyo was taken into an okiya (geisha compound) as a 14-year-old virgin. There, she learned the arts of etiquette and seduction, and was trained to sing, dance, play music, tell stories, pour tea and sake, and entertain rich businessmen and aristocrats. The most valuable skill she learned there was how to endure commodified sex. Her sister, Satsu, was also taken, but promptly sold into prostitution under the new name of Yukiyo. Geishas are, in a way, upper-class equivalents of prostitutes. Both are paid by the hour for entertainment—including sex.
After being given training and kimonos, geishas are bonded to their okiya by unrealistically large ‘debts’, which they must spend many years repaying to their bosses through geisha service. For some, geisha training is a once-in-a-lifetime investment that will make them rich and powerful (by meeting a danna, or sugar-daddy), while for many geishas, it marks the beginning of a downward spiral. In this respect, too, the geisha industry is remarkably similar to the sex trade.
In fact, geisha is written “芸妓” in Japanese, which translates as “artistic prostitute”. Uneducated, uncultured geishas (i.e. prostitutes) can only entertain their clients with sex—because they don’t know how to sing, dance, pour sake or play music.
Protagonist Chiyo leads a successful geisha career. She tries to find a suitable danna in a company that makes electrical appliances. Her successful run begins when a high price is placed on her virginity (as verified by incessant hymen-touching), and she is able to repay her debts to the okiya with ease.
Pleasing male clients is paramount for the geishas. At one point, the okiya boss arranges a meeting between Chiyo and the doctor—a potential suitor—by carefully cutting her with a knife and then sending her to hospital. It paid off: the doctor ultimately purchased her mizuage (virginity).
I see glamour in politicians racing to please millions of voters, or in celebrities frolicking around to attract millions of fans. But for some reason, I feel sadness in seeing geishas cater to the irrational whims of one person. I find the idea of a “VIP celebrity” industry quite disturbing. Admittedly, this conclusion is based on gut instinct and not on logic.
There are 50 characters in this book, many of whose beautiful names are lost in translation. Women’s names which mean “Bean Leaves” and “Little Lily” in Japanese are stripped of all meaning when transliterated as “Sayuri” and “Mahema” in this book. The original Japanese version is probably more beautiful than the English one. I can’t read Japanese, but I’d like to see the original Japanese names to complement the English.
The geisha industry is shaken upside-down when Japan loses the war in August 1945. Okiya are dismantled and many geishas are sent to work on production lines, where the struggles of geishahood pale in comparison:
“Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper” — final sentence
I recommend Memoirs of a Geisha for anyone who loves Japan, and for anyone who doesn’t know much about the sex trade. Not all geishas are glamorous, and not all prostitution is tragic; there are debatable ethical boundaries between the two, which I’m not even going to attempt to discuss here. The ethical debate becomes even more complex when you substitute sake (in this book) for the modern substance-of-choice, cocaine. Memoirs of a Geisha certainly makes you think. ★★★★★
James Kennedy 