Veronica Li's Blog - Posts Tagged "memoir"
Chinese New Year Sale: Journey Across the Four Seas
Journey Across the Four Seas: A Chinese Woman's Search for Home
Happy Chinese New Year! Journey Across the Four Seas is on sale for $0.99 Feb. 17, Tuesday, through Feb. 19, Thursday. The book, a memoir of my mother’s life, is about the Chinese cultural values on family and education.
Ancient China was called a family state. It was an agricultural society, where people worked the land and never moved away. If you were born in a place, you lived your whole life in that place. Your family kept on growing and growing until it became a village and then a state. The family was everything to a person. It provided education, employment, protection, insurance—everything a person needed in his lifetime.
The Chinese emphasis on education started about 2,000 years ago, when the imperial exam system was established. Any male, regardless of wealth and social status, was allowed to participate. It was the only way for a person to change his station in life. The exams were grueling and went on for days, but a person who passed them became an official of the imperial court. He brought wealth and glory to himself, his family and his entire village.
I wish everyone a wonderful year of the sheep, hopefully a gentle and calm year!
Happy Chinese New Year! Journey Across the Four Seas is on sale for $0.99 Feb. 17, Tuesday, through Feb. 19, Thursday. The book, a memoir of my mother’s life, is about the Chinese cultural values on family and education.
Ancient China was called a family state. It was an agricultural society, where people worked the land and never moved away. If you were born in a place, you lived your whole life in that place. Your family kept on growing and growing until it became a village and then a state. The family was everything to a person. It provided education, employment, protection, insurance—everything a person needed in his lifetime.
The Chinese emphasis on education started about 2,000 years ago, when the imperial exam system was established. Any male, regardless of wealth and social status, was allowed to participate. It was the only way for a person to change his station in life. The exams were grueling and went on for days, but a person who passed them became an official of the imperial court. He brought wealth and glory to himself, his family and his entire village.
I wish everyone a wonderful year of the sheep, hopefully a gentle and calm year!
Husband-Wife Collaboration
My husband, Sverrir Sigurdsson, and I recently published a book called Viking Voyager: An Icelandic Memoir, released on Nov. 3, 2020. It's his personal story of growing up in Iceland, an upbringing that inspired him to travel the world like his Viking forefathers.
We're happy to say, after several years of sometimes frustrating collaboration, we're still married. No two people can be more different than us. I'm a "people" person and he's what I call a "thing" person. He knows everything about hardware and machines and is a moron on human emotions and signals. I'm blind as a bat when it comes to my physical surroundings, but I can sniff out emotions like a dog. What we thought was an unbridgeable gap
turned out to be our strength. Sverrir provided the facts, I filled in the emotions, and together we tell a pretty exciting story.
Here’s the back cover summary of our book:
This vivacious personal story captures the heart and soul of modern Iceland. Born in Reykjavik on the eve of the Second World War, Sverrir Sigurdsson watched Allied troops invade his country and turn it into a bulwark against Hitler’s advance toward North America. The country’s post-war transformation from an obscure, dirt-poor nation to a prosperous one became every Icelander’s success. Spurred by this favorable wind, Sverrir answered the call of his Viking forefathers, setting off on a voyage that took him around the world. Join him on his roaring adventures!
We're happy to say, after several years of sometimes frustrating collaboration, we're still married. No two people can be more different than us. I'm a "people" person and he's what I call a "thing" person. He knows everything about hardware and machines and is a moron on human emotions and signals. I'm blind as a bat when it comes to my physical surroundings, but I can sniff out emotions like a dog. What we thought was an unbridgeable gap
turned out to be our strength. Sverrir provided the facts, I filled in the emotions, and together we tell a pretty exciting story.Here’s the back cover summary of our book:
This vivacious personal story captures the heart and soul of modern Iceland. Born in Reykjavik on the eve of the Second World War, Sverrir Sigurdsson watched Allied troops invade his country and turn it into a bulwark against Hitler’s advance toward North America. The country’s post-war transformation from an obscure, dirt-poor nation to a prosperous one became every Icelander’s success. Spurred by this favorable wind, Sverrir answered the call of his Viking forefathers, setting off on a voyage that took him around the world. Join him on his roaring adventures!
