A fictional portrait of Jiang Ching follows her life from her youth as the unwanted daughter of a concubine, to her search for fame as an actress in Shanghai, to her marriage to revolutionary Mao Zedong, to her role in the turbulent Communist rule of China.
The Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year (nominee)To rescue her family from poverty and avoid marrying her slope-shouldered cousin, seventeen-year-old Orchid competes to be one of the Emperor's wives. When she is chosen as a lower-ranking concubine she enters the erotically charged and ritualised Forbidden City. But beneath its immaculate facade lie whispers of murders and ghosts, and the thousands of concubines will stoop to any lengths to bear the Emperor's son. Orchid trains herself in the art of pleasuring a man, bribes her way into the royal bed, and seduces the monarch, drawing the attention of dangerous foes. Little does she know that China will collapse around her, and that she will be its last Empress.
La historia de la ?ltima emperatriz de China, una mujer ambiciosa que durante generaciones fue recordada como una gran seductora y una asesina sin escr?pulos. Anchee Min brinda el v?vido retrato de un personaje fascinante y, a trav?s de ?l, de la opulenta corte china del siglo XIX y de la vida sexual y pol?tica de las concubinas reales.Finales del siglo XIX. Envuelta en el marasmo de las ambiciones europeas, el arca?smo de sus estructuras y la impotencia pol?tica, la dinast?a Qing est? viviendo sus ?ltimos d?as. Pero a?...
Era todav?a una ni?a cuando decidi? desobedecer a su madre y liberarse de las vendas que iban a convertir sus pies en mu?ones, haciendo de ella una mujer deseable. ?ste fue el primer acto de rebeli?n de la hija de una concubina, que acabar?a siendo la ?ltima esposa de Mao Zedong.Todos recuerdan a Madame Mao como la tirana cruel y ambiciosa que gobern? China despu?s de la muerte de su marido, pero pocos saben qu? tuvo que hacer para escalar los pelda?os del poder y cu?les fueron sus armas ...
From the bestselling author of Red Azalea and Empress Orchid comes the powerful story of the friendship of a lifetime, based on the life of Pearl S. Buck.In the small southern town of Chin-kiang, in the last days of the nineteenth century, two young girls bump heads and become thick as thieves. Willow is the only child of a destitute family, Pearl the headstrong daughter of zealous Christian missionaries. She will ultimately become the internationally renowned author Pearl S. Buck, but for now she is just a girl embarrassed by her blonde hair and enchanted by her ...
Anchee Min, now a painter, film-maker, photographer and writer, left China for America in 1984. She had been a prize pupil and a model member of Mao Tse-tung's Red Guard. For her dutiful work for the Party, she was awarded a place at the arduous Red Fire Farm, where she experienced – at great personal risk – her sexual and emotional awakening with the female company leader. Selected from 20,000 candidates to be a star of propagandist films, she left behind the farm and her lover, for fame and an exotic affair with one of Madame Mao's leading emissaries. In this autobiography Anchee Min reveals, through a series of relationships, both a little-known China and her own character – independent, enquiring, and anxious to grasp every experience that comes within her reach. It is an erotic autobiography which, through the dialogue and characterizations of a novel, traces her life and relationships through the political and cultural upheavals of the era.
The last decades of the nineteenth century were a violent period in China"s history marked by humiliating foreign incursions and domestic rebellion, ultimately ending in the demise of the Ch"ing dynasty. The only constant during this tumultuous time was the power wielded by one person: the resilient, ever-resourceful Tzu Hsi, or Empress Orchid, as readers came to know her in Anchee Min"s critically acclaimed novel covering the first part of this complex woman"s life.The Last Empress is the story of Orchid"s dramatic transition from a strong-willed, instinctive young woman to a wise ...
At once a coming-of-age tale and a heart-rending love story, Wild Ginger explores the devastating experience of the Cultural Revolution, which defined Anchee Min"s youth. The beautiful, iron-willed Wild Ginger is only in elementary school when she is singled out by the Red Guards for her "foreign-colored eyes." Her classmate Maple is also a target of persecution. The novel chronicles the two girls" maturing in Shanghai in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Chairman Mao ruled absolutely and his followers took up arms in his name. Wild Ginger grows up to become a model Maoist, but her love for a man soon places her in an untenable position – and ultimately in mortal danger. This slim and powerful novel "examines the fragile sensibilities and emotions of an entire generation of Chinese youth" (Washington Post) and brilliantly delineates the psychological and sexual perversion of those times.
