In children’s literature and in young adult fiction, food is often used to bridge cultures—“dumplings are the great social equaliser” says the protagonist in the YA novel The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling as an example. And while food might be one of the easier entries into a culture, there are other ways too….
The royal phoenix is missing from the Tang dynasty palace! Princess Pingyang is worried. Can Rin the unicorn find Fan the phoenix? Together with her friends—dragon, tiger, and tortoise—Rin embarks on a journey to mystical lands in China.
Tom is a young boy who is “ordinary most of the time”—that is, unless he’s visiting his grandmother Bea, an archaeologist whose artifacts have the power to transport Tom back into time.
A hero in Japan, Beate Sirota is hardly a household name in her home country of the United States. Jeff Gottesfeld’s No Steps Behind: Beate Sirota Gordon’s Battle for Women’s Rights in Japan is a new picture book illustrated by Sheilla Witanto that tells Beate’s story and how she brought change to Japan after World…
A young girl follows her mother to work for the first time, climbing aboard a library bus in Kabul, Afghanistan to help on weekly visits to small villages and refugee camps. A group of young girls wait patiently for the bus to come. The door opens and the girls search for new books to borrow…
The gentle pitter-patter of falling rain intensifies into a storm: “Wetter / And wetter / The blues darker / And so do the greens…”
A young girl tells her grandmother: “I want to be a haenyeo just like you. You’re like a treasure-hunting mermaid.”
Twins Chirri & Chirra are pedalling on their bicycles when they find a cave: “Let’s take a look, Chirri.” “Yes let’s go, Chirra.” With those opening words, the twins in their matching white dresses (only a blue pocket differentiates Chirra from Chirri’s red pocket) ride their bikes into a tunnel, headlights illuminating the…
In China Through Time: A 2,500 year journey along the world’s greatest canal, young readers are invited to explore the people, the stories and the fortunes of the canal throughout history. With illustrations by Du Fei, the book is very much a journey, taking readers through key moments in the canal’s history.
It’s the first day of Spring and Miyuki, already running through the garden, can’t wait.
Only a few pieces of Chinese classical instrumental music have come close to entering the standard orchestral repertory. The 1939 “Yellow River Cantata” with lyrics by Guang Weiran set to music by Xian Xinghai, and the “Yellow River Concerto” later derived from it, is one of these.
Hong Kong is a surprisingly green place: the skyscrapers that form the stunning cityscapes that are the territory’s most common and iconic images hug the coast. Some three-quarters of Hong Kong is in varying degree countryside and 40 percent set aside as parkland.
A father cradles his son and says: My dear Marwan, in the long summers of childhood, when I was a boy the age you are now, your uncles and I spread our mattress on the roof of your grandfather’s farmhouse outside of Homs.
Rao Pingru and Mao Meitang married in Nanchang in 1948, when China was still dominated by rhythms and rituals lingering from imperial days. They stayed married through the Mao years, despite being separated for over two decades; in 1958, Pingru, was sent off for “Reeducation Through Labor”. His crime? He’d once served in the Kuomintang…
The ancient Indian epics carry a kind of authority different from their Western equivalents. The Indian audience has been ready to stay invested in the story for longer, unto the present times. The story of Rama is performed every year in India before the Hindu festivals of Dussehra and Diwali celebrated to mark, respectively, Rama’s…