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Community comment are the opinions of contributing users. These comment do not represent the opinions of Strathcona County Library.
sheilahamanaka
Mar 04, 2013
There should be a category of books called China Bashers. It would be a category to watch as it fills up, since China is the current Bad Guy - the scapegoat for US economic problems. "The Man From Beijing" has a ridiculous premise. Is anyone else "ROTFLMAO" at the idea of a highly successful capitalist/communist - who has risen to the top in China - risking everything to send a Chinese hit man armed with a large Japanese sword to torture and murder all the inhabitants of a small, all white village in Sweden in order to avenge the honor of his ancestor who had emigrated to the US to work on the construction of the first transcontinental railroad and was was dissed and mistreated by a Swedish foreman? Huh? I guess the reader is supposed to know - or find out - that those Chinese are consumed with honor and ancestor worship and am unquenchable thirst for revenge! Not like the protagonist Birgitta, who is a nice middle class, middle-aged white lady (not unlike the readers, perhaps?) who is a judge. And she is a fair judge who treats immigrants who break Swedish law fairly. And who likes to drink nice wine with dinner (not unlike the readers, perhaps?) and who figures out the mystery. Oh, NO! Now, if you didn't see it coming from page one, now the mastermind who was able to figure out how to sneak a Chinese hit man armed with a large Japanese sword into a nice all-white Swedish village to murder all its inhabitants is after HER! I guess the lesson to be learned if you live in an all-white village is, don't let them open a Chinese restaurant! I can only think that Markell's agent and editors were willing to swallow this ludicrous plot because of a long history of anti-Asian, racist stereotyping in European and US culture. Do you doubt me? -- Let's imagine the tables are turned for a moment: 100 years ago a Chinese worker hit and maybe even disfigured a white man. The white man is the great grandfather of Ted, a Harvard grad who is now the CEO of Fortune 500 company. Grrrr! Ted can't sleep for thinking how the Chinese man dissed his great grandfather. In fact, he's so mad he is willing to risk his entire Fortune 500 company to get revenge! Ted hires a professional white hit man to go to China, to a small village where the descendants of the Chinese guy who dissed his great grandfather now live, in total ignorance of what their ancestor had done. The white hit man sneaks into this all-Chinese rural village where, lo and behold, there is a MacDonalds. The hit man is able to sneak in disguised as the white manager of the MacDonalds, or perhaps a white tourist. Armed with a large English pike he tortures and kills all the inhabitants of the small Chinese village. Why? For American honor, of course. But, a Chinese woman judge somehow figures out that Ted is behind the killings in the small rural Chinese village because Ted has gone even further - he's killed his own sister (who met the Chinese woman judge) to keep her from telling on him! And now, Ted has to go to China HIMSELF to kill the Chinese woman judge!!! Just how is going to kill the Chinese judge in China? With an ancient US trick - the undercooked MacDonald's hamburger!!! But, just in the nick, Ted's nephew, who is avenging his mom's death and has come to China to warn the Chinese judge, shoots Ted dead. OK, so you take your novel to an agent. Would it sell? As a comedy, perhaps. But as a serious novel published by a mainstream publisher? Incredibly, it became an international bestseller and was made into a TV movie, too.