{"id":4126,"date":"2014-12-23T19:09:24","date_gmt":"2014-12-24T00:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=4126"},"modified":"2014-12-22T19:11:59","modified_gmt":"2014-12-23T00:11:59","slug":"beijing-bastard-into-the-wilds-of-a-changing-china-by-val-wang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/beijing-bastard-into-the-wilds-of-a-changing-china-by-val-wang","title":{"rendered":"Beijing Bastard: Into the Wilds of a Changing China by Val Wang"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2014\/12\/9781592408207.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-4127\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2014\/12\/9781592408207-198x300.jpg\" alt=\"9781592408207\" width=\"198\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2014\/12\/9781592408207-198x300.jpg 198w, https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2014\/12\/9781592408207.jpg 265w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 198px) 100vw, 198px\" \/><\/a>reviewed by Melanie Ho<br \/>\n18 December 2014 \u2014 American Val Wang goes \u201cinto the wilds of a changing China\u201d in Beijing Bastard,<!--more--> a memoir of her time there in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A coming-of-age story that combines observations of Beijing with the culture clashes of West and East, Wang\u2019s memoir gives readers insight into the city\u2019s artistic subcultures, while exploring her own Chinese roots.<\/p>\n<p>If Wang\u2019s backstory feels familiar to readers, particularly those who have grown up in the West only to venture East as adults, it\u2019s probably because hers is pretty typical. Wang\u2019s parents fled China before 1949 and after a detour in Southeast Asia, settled in the suburbs of Washington, DC. Wang describes a childhood that included Sunday Chinese school \u201cas regular as church\u201d, performances in a Chinese dancing troupe and time spent with her grandparents. As a teenager she began to rebel:<\/p>\n<p>The community I\u2019d grown up in was stifling\u2014everyone knew whose children went to Harvard and whose got pregnant, whose families were getting ahead in America and whose were falling behind. My successes or failures were theirs as well, and nothing was ever enough for them. It turned out we could be anything we wanted to be in life\u2014as long as it was a doctor or a lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>While her brother attended an Ivy League school and became a lawyer, Wang went to a liberal arts college and on a year abroad to Sweden, discovered the Chinese film Beijing Bastards.<\/p>\n<p>Wang\u2019s arrival in China shortly after college graduation speaks to the sort of culture clashes that one comes to expect with China memoirs. In Wang\u2019s case, moving in with her relatives sets the stage for conflict, but it also demonstrates how Wang (and possibly others in similar situations) has a foot in each world.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.asianreviewofbooks.com\/new\/?ID=2109#!\">For detail please visit here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>reviewed by Melanie Ho 18 December 2014  &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/beijing-bastard-into-the-wilds-of-a-changing-china-by-val-wang\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[1079,1080],"views":3878,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4128,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4126\/revisions\/4128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}