A Washington Post Best of 2012 pick “Delightful . . . a book that brings a corner of modern China alive.”—The Wall Street Journal When Wenguang Huang was nine years old, his grandmother became obsessed with her own death. Fearing cremation, she extracted from her family the promise to bury her after she died. This was in Xian, a city in central China, in the 1970s, when a national ban on all traditional Chinese practices, including burials, was strictly enforced. But Huang’s grandmother was persistent, and two years later, his father built her a coffin. He also appointed his older son, Wenguang, as coffin keeper, a distinction that meant, among other things, sleeping next to the coffin at night. Over the next fifteen years, the whole family was consumed with planning Grandma’s burial, a regular source of friction and contention, with the constant risk of being caught by the authorities. Many years after her death, the family’s memories of her coffin still loom large. Huang, now living and working in America, has come to realize how much the concern over the coffin has affected his upbringing and shaped the lives of everyone in the family. Lyrical and poignant, funny and heartrending, The Little Red Guard is the powerful tale of an ordinary family finding their way through turbulence and transition.

The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Huang, Wenguang

Community & Culture

Penguin Publishing Group

A Washington Post Best of 2012 pick Three generations of a family living under one roof reflect the dramatic transformations of an entire society in this memoir of life in 20th century China When Wenguang Huang was nine years old, his grandmother became obsessed with her own death. Fearing cremation, she extracted from her family the promise to bury her after she died. This was in Xi’an, a city in central China, in the 1970s, when a national ban on all traditional Chinese practices, including burials, was strictly enforced. But Huang’s grandmother was persistent, and two years later, his father built her a coffin. He also appointed his older son, Wenguang, as coffin keeper, a distinction that meant, among other things, sleeping next to the coffin at night. Over the next fifteen years, the whole family was consumed with planning Grandma’s burial, a regular source of friction and contention, with the constant risk of being caught by the authorities. Many years after her death, the family’s memories of her coffin still loom large. Huang, now living and working in America, has come to realize how much the concern over the coffin has affected his upbringing and shaped the lives of everyone in the family. Lyrical and poignant, funny and heartrending, The Little Red Guard is the powerful tale of an ordinary family finding their way through turbulence and transition.

Riverhead Books

The downfall of Bo Xilai in China was more than a darkly thrilling mystery. It revealed a cataclysmic internal power struggle between Communist Party factions, one that reached all the way to China's new president Xi Jinping. The scandalous story of the corruption of the Bo Xilai family—the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood; Bo's secret lovers; the secret maneuverings of Bo's supporters; the hasty trial and sentencing of Gu Kailai, Bo's wife—was just the first rumble of a seismic power struggle that continues to rock the very foundation of China's all-powerful Communist Party. By the time it is over, the machinations in Beijing and throughout the country that began with Bo's fall could affect China's economic development and disrupt the world's political and economic order. Pin Ho and Wenguang Huang have pieced together the details of this fascinating political drama from firsthand reporting and an unrivaled array of sources, some very high in the Chinese government. This was the first scandal in China to play out in the international media—details were leaked, sometimes invented, to non-Chinese news outlets as part of the power plays that rippled through the government. The attempt to manipulate the Western media, especially, was a fundamental dimension to the story, and one that affected some of the early reporting. A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel returns to the scene of the crime and shows not only what happened in Room 1605 but how the threat of the story was every bit as important in the life and death struggle for power that followed. It touched celebrities and billionaires and redrew the cast of the new leadership of the Communist Party. The ghost of Neil Heywood haunts China to this day.

A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel: Murder, Money, and an Epic Power Struggle in China

History

Ho, Pin

Asia

PublicAffairs

In 1973, when Wenguang Huang was eight, his grandmother became obsessed with her own death. Fearing cremation, she appealed to her family to promise to bury her after she'd died. This was in Xi'an, a city in central China, at a time when a national ban on all traditional Chinese practices, including burials, was strictly enforced. But his grandmother was persistent, and two years later, Huang's father built her a coffin. Over the next fifteen years, the whole family was consumed with planning Grandma's burial, a regular source of friction and contention, with the constant risk of being caught by the authorities. Years later, Huang came to understand how much the coffin had influenced his upbringing and shaped the lives of everyone in the family.

Dreamscape Media

In this vivid, humorous autobiography, Wenguang Huang recounts his coming of age in the 1970s in Xi’an, in central China, during the country’s Cultural Revolution. When he was nine years old, his grandmother became obsessed with her own death and with the funeral rites that would grant her eternal peace. Terrified by the thought of cremation—obligatory in communist China—she made her family promise to bury her in her native village. Huang’s father gathered what little savings he had and built a coffin, appointing Huang, his oldest son, as coffin keeper—a responsibility that meant, among other things, sleeping next to the coffin at night. Over the next 20 years, even as profound social and political changes gripped the country, the Huang family diligently planned the funeral. In this memoir of the last three decades of the 20th century, Huang, a translator and journalist who ultimately immigrated to the United States, paints a portrait of a society caught between ancient traditions and a radical push for modernization of the Maoist regime. As he recounts his own family’s story, Huang offers illuminating insights into the contradictions that make up modern China.

El pequeño guardia rojo (Spanish Edition)

Arts & Literature

Libros del Asteroide

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Books by Huang, Wenguang

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Huang, Wenguang. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir

The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir

A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel: Murder, Money, and an Epic Power Struggle in China

The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir

The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir

El pequeño guardia rojo (Spanish Edition)