Moying Li's SNOW FALLING IN SPRING in the Taipei Times

A child's view of the 'Great Leap'

Moying Li's new memoir details her experiences growing up during China's Cultural Revolution, which she says gave her a hunger for education.
By David Mehegan
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, BOSTON
Sunday, Jun 15, 2008,Sunday, Jun 15, 2008, Page 14

Once upon a time in faraway China, a little girl lived with her father and grandparents in a house with a courtyard in Beijing. She was happy, playing with her schoolmates and little brother. Then hard times came. She lived through them safely, grew up, and came to the US to study. Now she lives happily with her husband in a house with a courtyard on Beacon Hill, in Boston.

That’s the story of Moying Li, 53, author of the just-published Snow Falling in Spring: Coming of Age in China During the Cultural Revolution. Published in the young-adult category, the book is written in a style that could appeal as readily to adult readers. It begins with China’s disastrous Great Leap Forward in 1958 and ends in 1977, with the 26-year-old English student crossing the Luohu Bridge into Hong Kong en route to a flight that will take her to a new life in the US.

There are many accounts of the Cultural Revolution, which ravaged Chinese society from 1966 to 1976. What sets Li’s witness and memory apart is its simplicity, lack of clutter or moralizing. It is almost entirely about relationships, with little of politics or history. She does not look back in anger. “I see it in a Taoist way,” she said in an interview at her home. “The good and the bad are part of each other, somehow. Even though I and my generation went though hard times, without it I wonder if we would have gained maturity and reflection. In one sense, the experience of the Cultural Revolution has become to me a strength.”

Li’s mother, assigned to teach in another city, was often absent, so the key adults in the child’s life were her father, who was a screenwriter for an army film bureau and a book lover, and her dynamic grandmother. Both lavished warmth on the two children, and encouraged them to be students and readers. But they were not immune from the troubles around them. In the late 1950s, the family built a backyard furnace, part of a delusional national campaign to build a steel industry that would overtake the productivity of the West. That and other policies of national mismanagement led to failure and famine.

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SNOW FALLING IN SPRING reviewed by readers on BookBrowse

Snow Falling in Spring : Coming of Age in China During the Cultural Revolution
by Moying Li

READER REVIEWS

Rated 5 of 5 by Laurie Milton
Inspiring!
This book was given to me as a birthday present and I am so grateful. The beautiful soul of writer Moying shines through and matches the beautiful author photograph. I am inspired to follow my dream and I deeply believe I can do it, referencing the tenacious strength of the author. I sit in awe of her story of coming of age in China during the cultural revolution. God bless you Moying for sharing with all of us.We need it. I live by your quote: EACH ONE,TEACH ONE - and you have.

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Rated 5 of 5 by H.
Supreme
I am only half way through the book but is one of the best books I have ever read! I usually do not read memoirs (because I like fiction) but my wonderful grandmother turned me to this book and I decided to give it a try. When i started to read Snow Falling In Spring I was blown away by how well the book flowed from one topic to another. Each chapter was like it's own separate story but the author Moying Li always found a couple of ways to tie the previous chapter into the next chapter. Every time I would read this book, I would get so lost in the time period, the plot, the big events that I would forget where I was. One time, I was reading the book at school and the teacher had to call my name at least 5 times to get my attention because I was entirely engulfed in the book. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone, even if you don't like certain types of books. Read about the first 3 chapters and I can almost guarantee that you will fall in love with this spectacular book. Give it a try!!

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Moying Li's SNOW FALLING IN SPRING in the Asian Review of Books

Snow Falling in Spring: Coming of Age in China During the Cultural Revolution by Moying Li

Karmel Schreyer
15/06/2008

Snow Falling in Spring is a memoir -- the story of MOYING LI's childhood in China. It is an idyllic beginning; her carefree days are spent with DiDi (little brother) and cousins running around the family's courtyard under the doting watch of extended family and like-family members. Then, one day, the adults, excited and preoccupied, no longer pay the children much attention, and the beloved sanctuary of the courtyard has been invaded by a horrible belching "backyard furnace". The Great Leap Forward has begun, and Moying Li's life will never be the same...

Like so many memoirs and works of fiction about this time and place, the author finds escape and solace and hope in books -- and especially in the Western classics. People are in fact risking their lives to read these now-forbidden stories, giving us startling proof, perhaps, of the value of literature. Secret reading clubs are formed, whole novels are copied out by candlelight -- all this will surely be inspiration for any reluctant reader to start looking at the classics in a new light (although if they are reading this book, they are certainly doing well in the book-loving department).

Moying writes how reading about Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, as well as Jack London's The Call of the Wild gave her, basically, the will to keep on living. Shakespeare was a struggle (she read in English, with a dictionary nearby) but could relate to the tragedies, such as King Lear: "Loyalty and betrayal, honesty and deception -- all of this had become so recognizable in my own world."

But the book-reading is just a small part of the story, of course.

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Peter Gosselin's HIGH WIRE in the Oklahoman

Oklahoman
June 22, 2008 Sunday
City Edition

Author details financial 'High Wire'

BYLINE: Dennie Hall
SECTION: LIVING; DENNIE HALL; Pg. 9D

Things are going smoothly. Both spouses have jobs. They live in a comfortable house in the suburbs.
Then their world comes crashing down. Bam!
Maybe it's a job loss. Perhaps it's a spike in interest rates. It could be a death in the family. Likely it's a big medical bill, or maybe it is runaway inflation at a time when pay increases are nil.
Whatever the cause, author Peter Gosselin provides a scary look at the plight of average folks in "High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families" (Basic Books, $26).
Gosselin writes that Americans have had a year in which "we've had to hold our breath as one disaster after another has swept over us - the mortgage mess, the financial freeze-up and now, recession." He writes that economic risks once carried on the shoulders of business and government have shifted "to the backs of working families."
Many employers no longer provide health insurance. Families able to provide it for themselves do so at tremendous expense and often find that a co-pay - or even an insurer's refusal to pay a claim - can be financially ruinous. Some employees work and save for years toward retirement only to learn a company, such as Enron, has failed them.
With so many employers moving their operations to foreign countries, a sudden pink slip is not unusual.
"Our near-exclusive reliance on free-market principles to solve every financial and social problem has led the nation down a political and ethical dead-end," the book's publisher writes. "Now is the time for a new direction."
Gosselin helps readers understand what that direction would be. His writing is made more meaningful by use of real personalities to illustrate problems, putting a human face to the new reality of financial upheaval.
His book should be imperative reading for anyone concerned about financial woes and their causes.
Gosselin is the national economics correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and a member of the paper's Washington bureau. He is now a visiting fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.
Words on the book's cover by Mark Shields of NewsHour put it succinctly: "If you have time to read only two books this year about the condition of the country and the challenges we all face, do yourself a favor and read 'High Wire' twice."

Peter Gosselin's HIGH WIRE in the Star-Ledger

The Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey)
June 22, 2008 Sunday
FINAL EDITION

BRIEFLY
SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. 5

High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families
Peter Gosselin; Basic Books, $26.95

Los Angeles Times national economics correspondent Gosselin's book examines the broader lessons in our current economic crisis. The author traverses readers' material lives to show how changes in work, benefits, homeownership, college and retirement, even insurance, have shifted economic risks, once borne on the shoulders of business and government, to the backs of working families. With new data and real-life examples, Gosselin explains why Americans' mounting anxiety is warranted and how everyone is on a high wire, only one misstep away from disaster.

Peter Gosselin's HIGH WIRE reviewed in the LA Times

'High Wire' by Peter Gosselin
American families struggle to make ends meet in a world of globalization, mortgage meltdowns and ever-soaring fuel prices.

By Chris Hedges
June 29, 2008

High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families
Peter Gosselin, Basic Books: 374 pp., $26.95

In his book "High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families," Peter Gosselin writes movingly of the personal wreckage endured by many Americans in today's volatile economy. Gosselin, the Los Angeles Times' national economics correspondent, chronicles in detail the emotional, physical and economic devastation caused by outsourced jobs and insurance companies that rescind coverage to the seriously ill, as well as the roller-coaster fortunes of U.S. workers competing in the global marketplace.

Gosselin paints a portrait of an America where citizens suffer profound dislocations because of vanishing safety nets and can expect to be discarded by corporations without comparable job prospects or benefits. The human cost, which he adroitly conveys, is heartbreaking. It is also, as he notes, widespread. He illustrates wild income swings that have left the poor, the middle class and even formerly well-do-do families suddenly struggling to survive. These dramatic plunges from lost jobs have now "reached into the majority of working American households."

The relentless efforts of corporations to maximize profit has a human cost. For example, when Rebecca J. Rowlands was diagnosed with cancer, her insurance company, Blue Shield of California, promptly cut off her benefits in a process known as "post-claims underwriting," or "rescissions." Rowlands, her health deteriorating, fought back and won a settlement. But during that legal fight, as Gosselin notes, her chemotherapy was delayed for a prolonged period, saddling her with "increasingly severe medical problems" that are likely to leave her with "a six-figure medical debt."

"High Wire" is filled with such tales: of people crushed by credit card debt, mortgages they should never have been granted, predatory lenders, as well as sudden and catastrophic unemployment caused by "outsourcing."

Chris Hedges is the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" and, most recently, "I Don't Believe in Atheists."

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POISONED PROFITS by Philip and Alice Shabecoff listed in Chicago Tribune

HOT SUMMER READS
www.chicagotribune.com, July 10, 2008

Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children
By Philip and Alice Shabecoff
Random House, $26 (August)
Two journalists cite astounding evidence that children are increasingly ill due to industrial toxins.

For the full article, click here.