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Kosher Chinese
Contributor(s): Levy, Michael (Author)
ISBN: 0805091963     ISBN-13: 9780805091960
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
OUR PRICE:   $16.20  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: July 2011
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
- Travel | Asia - China
- Biography & Autobiography | Jewish
Dewey: B
LCCN: 2010040319
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.4" W x 8.3" (0.65 lbs) 256 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - Chinese
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

An irreverent tale of an American Jew serving in the Peace Corps in rural China, which reveals the absurdities, joys, and pathos of a traditional society in flux

In September of 2005, the Peace Corps sent Michael Levy to teach English in the heart of China's heartland. His hosts in the city of Guiyang found additional uses for him: resident expert on Judaism, romantic adviser, and provincial basketball star, to name a few. His account of overcoming vast cultural differences to befriend his students and fellow teachers is by turns poignant and laugh-out-loud funny.

While reveling in the peculiarities of life in China's interior, the author also discovered that the other billion (people living far from the coastal cities covered by the American media) have a complex relationship with both their own traditions and the rapid changes of modernization. Lagging behind in China's economic boom, they experience the darker side of capitalism with Chinese characteristics, daily facing the schizophrenia of conflicting ideologies.

Kosher Chinese is an illuminating account of the lives of the residents of Guiyang, particularly the young people who will soon control the fate of the world.

Contributor Bio(s): Levy, Michael: - Michael Levy is an educator, writer, and traveler, who teaches in Brooklyn, New York, at Saint Ann's School. He is the author of Kosher Chinese: Living, Teaching, and Eating with China's Other Billion, and he returns frequently to Guiyang to check in on his students and visit the basketball courts where he momentarily attained stardom. While in the United States, he keeps strictly kosher. While in China, he eats anything with four legs except the table.