Chi Pang-yuan (b. 1924) is an internationally recognized educator, scholar, and author. She is professor emeritus of English and comparative literature at National Taiwan University. She is coeditor of Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey (2000) and The Last of the Whampoa Breed: Stories of the Chinese Diaspora (Columbia, 2003), among other books. John Balcom teaches at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. His Columbia University Press translations include Cao Naiqian’s There’s Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night (2009); Huang Fan’s Zero and Other Fictions (2011); and Yang Mu’s Memories of Mount Qilai: The Education of a Young Poet (2015).
An inspiring life story of unvanquished resilience.--Kirkus Reviews An engaging read for those interested in memoir, 20th-century Chinese and Taiwanese history, and Chinese culture.--Library Journal A personal memoir set against the history of modern China and Taiwan. . . . From coming of age during China's war with Japan to her eventual move to Taiwan, Chi's story remains both intimate and historically connected.--World Literature Today This is a memoir of epic proportions. Chi's work is a testimony of this tremendous historical period that is the long twentieth century for the Chinese and the Taiwanese peoples. The English translation of this epochal memoir is most certainly significant.--Letty Chen, author of Writing Chinese: Reshaping Chinese Cultural Identity The Great Flowing River is one of the great memoirs of modern China. Telling the story of one woman's odyssey through the twentieth century, this is not just a deeply moving account of Chi Pang-yuan and her family, but a window into how the Chinese people came through the trauma of war and turmoil, and created a new set of civilized values in their aftermath.--Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945 The Great Flowing River is a grand memoir. It tells a story of loss, suffering, fortitude, and the nobility of sacrifice. It is a personal narrative that reflects the fate of the Chinese nation, especially the fate of those who were driven away from their homeland and managed to survive elsewhere with integrity and dignity. There is a calmness and tremendous power in the wise narrative voice, whose resonance lingers long after the last page is turned.--Ha Jin, author of Waiting and other novels I don't know of any other memoir in English that is quite like this. It is of enormous significance because it adds so much for those with an interest in the Republic of China in both China and Taiwan.--J. Megan Greene, author of The Origins of the Developmental State in Taiwan: Science Policy and the Quest for Modernization