Translated from the Italian by Sue Rose
Introduction by Xinran Xue of 'The Good Women of China' fame.
Popular and inspiring memoir, a personal journey of an abandoned young half-Chinese, half-Italian girl in war torn China. 'A guide to China, past and present' (D di Rebublica)
10,000 copies sold in Italy.
Price: £13.50
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SUMMARY:
Bamboo Hirst is a Chinese-Italian writer whose books draw on her unique overlap of the East and the West.
The book is a popular and inspiring memoir about the personal journey of the author as an abandoned young half-Chinese, half-Italian girl in war torn China. It tells of her quest in both countries, to find her true identity and reconcile her eastern and western roots.
Its scope is wide. There is the love story of her parents, a Chinese singer and an Italian spy, who fall in love in the ‘30s - a time of espionage and political chicanery between east and west. Against a backdrop of the Japanese invasion and the rise of Mao, Bamboo tells her own incredible story of how, after being left in a missionary convent, she had to leave China as a ‘foreigner’ in Mao’s political world. On reaching Naples where her father promised to meet her, she found herself abandoned, aged thirteen, in a strange country where she could not speak the language. She was placed by the authorities in an orphanage in Piedmont until she was twenty. Later she became a model and worked in the fashion world in public relations. she rose to become a model in Italy, and to marry an Englishman.
The author concludes with a portrait of everyday life in China today. The reader learns about rites and ceremonies, folk beliefs and cultural markers, styles of dress and ethnic traits, as seen through the observant eyes of a Chinese-Italian whose European heritage makes her uniquely placed to comment on the many differences that exist between east and west.
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