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Recent Reads – Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper

Anyone with any interest at all in China MUST read this book. I lived in China between 1987 and 1990 – just a handful of years before the China described by Fuschia Dunlop. I found myself laughing and crying at her descriptions of various experiences – she brought to life some of my own emotions and thoughts from my time there. I did disagree with her rather negative impressions of Hunan, which was my first period of any consequence living in China. I think Ms Dunlop had got very used to living in Sichuan and expected a similar lifestyle in Hunan, which as she notes, is a rather intimidating place in many ways because of the fierce independence of mind of most Hunanese.

I can still remember walking across the Xiang Jiang bridge from Hunan Normal University campus to the Changsha CBD ( a distance of some kilometres). As I crossed the bridge, the male cyclists, who (at least in those days) numbered in their thousands, would all start whistling in a rather strange high pitched whistle when they caught sight of me. I didn’t have a clue why. One day I discovered that Hunanese males believed that all foreign males had “sparrow dicks”! Then I understood.

If only, dear reader, I’d had the opportunity to demonstrate the falsity of their assumption…..