Iron & Silk

Résumé du livre

Few if any foreigners have glimpsed the people and places Mark Salzman tells about in this unique, inspired portrayal of post-Cultural Revolution China and the Chinese. Shortly after he arrived in Hunan Province in 1982 to teach English, Salzman encountered Pan Qingfu, one of the nation's foremost wushu (kung fu) experts and, as such, a cultural hero to the Chinese. Already a skilled martial artist, Salzman vowed he could "eat bitter"-endure pain-and accepted the master's invitation to become his one and only private pupil. Out of their surprisingly orthodox enactment of the traditional shifu-tudi (master-student) relationship grew a powerful and unusual friendship-and the opportunity for adventures both in and out of the martial arts. In addition to his shy, polite, and sometimes dazzlingly candid students, Salzman met up with swordsmen, bureaucrats, peasants, intellectuals, criminals, calligraphers, and other citizens of contemporary China-and in “Iron and Silk,” he writes about them all, with the acuity and humor of a born storyteller.