Review: Beyond East and West



Beyond East and West by John C.H. Wu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I thought it was fascinating to read about life in China during the first half of the twentieth century. Wu's upbringing was so different from anything I'd ever read about. He was raised my his father's first wife because his father's second wife, Wu's biological mother, died when he was four, and Wu's father also died when Wu was young. Already that seemed different from most people's upbringings, but I was very surprised that his stepmother showered love on him and he adored her back. It was refreshing to read about, since it's so different from what you might have expected, especially since the stepmother was jealous of Wu's biological mother.

He was also betrothed to be married at the age of six and didn't meet his wife until the day of their wedding. I loved how when someone asked him how he could love his wife if he didn't choose her he said something along the lines of, "Well, you didn't choose your parents or your siblings, but you love them, don't you?" Not the exact quote, but the sentiment surprised me.

Wu's perspective on Christianity was interesting because he grew up memorizing and reading Confucius and Lao Tzu, besides being heavily immersed in Buddhism. His view of Christianity was quite new to me as an American, and quite fascinating because I was raised Christian and don't often consider how different Christianity would seem if you came to it later in life from an outside perspective.

It was astonishing to me how quickly he went from being a guy who visited prostitutes (his poor wife) to a guy who was a faithful and sincerely pious Catholic after his conversion. His complete change of heart really shows the power of God because I don't think anyone could make such a complete turnaround so quickly all on their own. His conversion gave me hope that our society can transform for the better much quicker than I otherwise would hope. With God, nothing is impossible.

The book was full of clever quotes. I can see why he was sometimes referred to as the Chinese Chesterton by his contemporaries, but I liked him a bit better than Chesterton. He seemed more relatable and less distant to me.

View all my reviews

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Writing a Latin Dedication for my book

Image
Photo by  Mathew Schwartz  on  Unsplash I've been working on writing a Latin dedication poem for the novella I am planning to self-publish. For whatever reason I decided that I wanted it to be a Sapphic Stanza à la Catullus 51. The meter for a Sapphic Stanza is: The '—' is a long syllable, 'u' a short syllable, and the 'x' can be either long or short. So far so simple, but when I sat down to write it took me the better part of a day to come up with this: Christe dono omnia quae mihi per Matrem-- et librum quoque si istum amas tu. Det libellus gloriolam quiete Nunc tibi, Rex mi. Translation: Christ, I give all things which are mine through the mother—and the book too if you love such a thing. Let it give a little glory quietly Now to you, my King. I wasn't too happy with this for a number of reasons. It's 100% meter driven and it didn't say what I wanted it to say, really. Dono omnia  was awkward because two vowels norm...
Read more

Review: Emergency Response

Image
Emergency Response by Susan Sleeman My rating: 1 of 5 stars I did not really care about the main characters somehow. They didn't really seem like real people to me and I had trouble believing that they would get over their emotional baggage as quickly as they did in the end. Some things were left unresolved in the story. For example, the hero, Noah, had a child he'd abandoned years before whose life he now wanted to be a part of. He never even got to interact with his son, let alone make progress towards his goal of being a part of his son's life. Since this book is part of a series, I suppose she may intend to resolve that issue later, but it was still unsatisfying to be left hanging. The was one major implausibility near the end of the story. *Spoiler alert if you care about such things.* Throughout most of the book, the heroine, Darcie, had gang members who kept trying to murder her by strangling her, shooting at her, etc. They didn't care ho...
Read more

Review: Their Second Chance Love

Image
Their Second Chance Love by Kat Brookes My rating: 3 of 5 stars Warning: Spoilers ahead, if that bothers you. This is the only Christian Romance novel I've ever made it all the way through, so I think Kat Brookes deserves a lot of credit for writing an engaging story. I liked the characters in the story, especially the hero, Logan, and I was happy that things worked out. I'd love to read the other novels in the series in any case. However, I did think this particular story could have been improved. Logan and Hope were a couple when they were teenagers and they had been planning to get married, but Hope dumped Logan when she found out from her doctor that she was infertile and would never be able to give Logan the many children he'd always wanted. Instead of telling him this, Hope lied and said she didn't love him when she ended things. Fast forward nine years later. Hope's father's health problems end up throwing Logan and Hope together. Th...
Read more