Chinese Characters

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Sarah Lloyd spent eight months travelling through China — in buses, bicycles, boats and trains from north to south to far west of that vast land — seeking out ordinary people in a bid to understand their way of life in a country incomprehensible to most foreigners. During her wanderings she discovered a China always far removed form the image borrowed, as she puts it, from 'willow-patterned plates'. She vividly depicts the landscapes and street scenes which entrance every visitor, but what sets Sarah Lloyd’s journey apart are her encounters with individuals. With patience and sympathy, and some self-taught Chinese, she got as close as any outsider is allowed to a wide variety of Chinese, among them a librarian who thought her birthmark would prevent her from ever marrying; an artist, ex-peasant, who painted like Cézanne; a teacher, ex-bourgeois, who lost everything she valued when the communists gained power. Through them, their hopes and frustrations, their differing lifestyles, morals and views on politics and education, emerges a penetrating look at China in the 1980s. A diverse and enigmatic country is brought quite brilliantly and unforgettably to life.