The Great Flowing River

Chi Pang-Yuan is professor Emeritus of comparative literature and English at National Taiwan University. In collaboration with David Wang, she published The Last of the Whampoa Breed: Stories of the Chinese Diaspora (CUP, 2003) and Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey (Indiana University Press, 2000).Balcom John :

John Balcom is professor of Chinese-English translation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He has translated a number of books, including Wintry Night by Li Qiao, The City Trilogy by Chang His-kuo, and Taiwan’s Indigenous Writers: An Anthology of Stories, Essays, and Poems.Chi Pang-yuan (b. 1924) is an internationally recognized educator, scholar, and author. She is professor emeritus of English and comparative literature at National Taiwan University. She is coeditor of Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey (2000) and The Last of the Whampoa Breed: Stories of the Chinese Diaspora (Columbia, 2003), among other books.

John Balcom teaches at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. His Columbia University Press translations include Cao Naiqian’s There’s Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night (2009); Huang Fan’s Zero and Other Fictions (2011); and Yang Mu’s Memories of Mount Qilai: The Education of a Young Poet (2015).

J. Megan Greene, author of The Origins of the Developmental State in Taiwan: Science Policy and the Quest for Modernization:
I don’t know of any other memoir in English that is quite like this. It is of enormous significance because it adds so much for those with an interest in the Republic of China in both China and Taiwan.

Letty Chen, author of Writing Chinese: Reshaping Chinese Cultural Identity:
This is a memoir of epic proportions. Chi’s work is a testimony of this tremendous historical period that is the long twentieth century for the Chinese and the Taiwanese peoples. The English translation of this epochal memoir is most certainly significant.

Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945:
The Great Flowing River is one of the great memoirs of modern China. Telling the story of one woman's odyssey through the twentieth century, this is not just a deeply moving account of Chi Pang-yuan and her family, but a window into how the Chinese people came through the trauma of war and turmoil, and created a new set of civilized values in their aftermath.

Ha Jin, author of Waiting and other novels:
The Great Flowing River is a grand memoir. It tells a story of loss, suffering, fortitude, and the nobility of sacrifice. It is a personal narrative that reflects the fate of the Chinese nation, especially the fate of those who were driven away from their homeland and managed to survive elsewhere with integrity and dignity. There is a calmness and tremendous power in the wise narrative voice, whose resonance lingers long after the last page is turned.