Diane Lu-Hovasse

Breathtaking fusion of Chinese erhu with western sensibility, Jan 1 2009

I first heard this CD while shopping in a Japanese ceramics shop. Immediately I recognized the distinctive Chinese erhu. I wondered how this Chinese music came to be played in a Japanese pottery store. When I bought the CD, I learned the artist, Jia Peng Fang was a passionate erhu musician whose career was derailed by the Cultural Revolution in China. He was eventually able to make his way to Japan where musicians there helped him. The unique approach of the Japanese music community to fuse traditional Asian instruments with western ones produced this fine example of new music. The album is full of poignant, yearning as well as a unity with Nature and serenity of spirit. I think this is the… Read more

Authentic to the core, full of longing, tragedy, April 23 2004

How genuine this novel is! Having grown up like Su-Jen in a small Ontario town where we were one of the only Chinese families, I totally related to the girl's experience, even though, unlike her, I was born in Canada. The smell, the taste, the look of a small town Chinese-Canadian greasy spoon certainly rang true to my mother's stories about her own family's operation of several cafés in different Ontario communities. The author evokes the claustrophobic isolation of the family living and working amidst a predominantly white community with such authenticity, it left me breathless, hoping for their emancipation. The story begins with a woman's memory of her childhood, but the story… Read more