Twin-Sun River: An American POW in China - Softcover

Qi, Shouhua

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0983875308 ISBN 13: 9780983875307

Publisher: WingsAsClouds Press, 2011

Synopsis

"Turncoats" and "Diabolic Brainwashing" are among the headlines that met the 21 young American GIs who refused repatriation when the armistice was signed to end the Korean War (1950-53) and chose to go to Red China. Hollywood films such as "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) didn't help ease the frenzy over the perceived Communist diabolism either. For a long time no one knows what life behind the "Bamboo Curtain" was really like for those "21 Turncoats" who had turned their backs on their motherland.

"Twin-Sun River" tells the story of Pfc Simon Mackenzie who chooses to disappear in the heartland of China to chase his "Walden" or "Peach Orchard Outside the World" dream soon after the armistice was effected. There, in a small mountain village, Simon's decision is tested over and again as he struggles to survive a big flood, the Great Leap Forward, the Famine, and finally, the Cultural Revolution and as he becomes enmeshed in the life of a Chinese family and their beautiful "widowed" daughter-in-law.

Parallel to Simon's journey is that of Jie Ding, a humanities professor who traverses the changing landscape of China during the summer of 2001 to accomplish an impossible mission while trying to exorcise his own demons: his marital problems and the haunting memories of the Cultural Revolution.

The two journeys "crisscross" and finally converge on the Twin-Sun River glimmering under the early fall sky.

About this title

From the Author:

Like everyone else in the US and in the world, for that matter, I was gripped by the story of Abu Ghraib in 2004 and 2005, the shocking photos of torture and abuse that were being released.... which "inspired" the Chinese media to publish many stories of the much more "humane" treatment of American POWs during the Korean War, which, in turn, inspired a keen interest in me on the subject, and as I dug into the history about that "forgotten war," as told and retold by both the Chinese and Americans, the idea of Twin-Sun River: An American POW in China began to shape up.      

This novel is not only inspired by real historical events, but also by my own life experiences in China. Born in the year of the "Great Leap Forward" (1957), just in time to be hit by the Famine (1960-63), and soon to watch my father, principal of a rural middle school, being brutalized by the Red Guards during the "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976), working on the novel oftentimes is not unlike submersing myself again in deep, scarred memories.

About the Author:

A native of Nanjing, China, Shouhua Qi came to the United States in 1989. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Feminist Studies, AMBIT, The Connecticut Review, Rain Flower, and many other publications. Qi is the author of Western Literature in China and the Translation of a Nation (2012), China Complex: From the Sublime to the Absurd on the U.S.-China Scene (2009),Pearl Jacket and Other Stories: Flash Fiction from Contemporary China (editor/translator, 2008), Red Guard Fantasies and Other Stories (2007),When the Purple Mountain Burns: A Novel (2005), and a number of other books.    

About this edition

• Publisher: WingsAsClouds Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0983875308
• ISBN 13: 9780983875307
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 253