Jewish Wayfarers in Modern China Tragedy and Splendor [Hardcover]

Jews in China doesnt sound like an obvious topic at first blush but Messmer has compiled an extensive, admirable, and fascinating collection of vignettes of a displaced people surviving and living through the most tumultuous time in Chinas history.In the pages of this amazing and unique book men and women come alive who arrived in China for longer or shorter periods of time. Hailing from Europe and elsewhere, there were merchants and journalists, physicians and writers, adventurers and communists, and refugees from Nazi Germany. They witnessed one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history, their lives forever affected by what they saw and experienced. In vivid portrayals the author masterfully allows us glimpses of such women as Emily Hahn and Ruth Weiss, or men like Harold Isaacs and Theodore White and how they viewed 'their' China. Many like Willy Tonn regretfully left the China they had come to consider their own. Others like Israel Epstein and Sidney Shapiro remained in the country which they loved and where they felt they belonged. This is a superbly stimulating book.Dr Matthias Messmer, a Swiss author and journalist, recently published a book titled Jewish Wayfarers in Modern China: Tragedy and Splendor that deals with the memories and biographies of Jewish personalities.Jewish Wayfarers in Modern China is, indeed, panoramic: the book profiles a fascinating array of personalities whose only unifying characteristic is Jewish ethnicity. . . . Matthias Messmer. . . has vacuumed up details from newspapers, memoirs, academic archives, interviews, and other sources, and stitched them together into life narratives in an impressive feat of coordination and stamina. . . . As a reference volume for China through diverse Jewish eyes, then, this book succeeds. And it may serve as a blueprint for future writers seeking to articulate the depth and complexity of the Jewish experience in China.Through a collection of short biographies situated in the context of l4