Ying C Compestine's Blog

• A Bird Out of the Cage

  November 14, 2009

  • As a child, the only trip my parents took me on was to Southern China, to visit my dying grandmother. My parents spent months applying for various travel documents, retrieving permits from the local police and standing in long lines for days to buy the train tickets. When we had to spend a night in a hotel, the clerk not only demanded that my parents show all kind of official permits, she also ...
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• Every Word Counts

  November 12, 2009

  • Even after publishing 18 books and over 60 feature articles in national magazines, when people ask me what I do for a living, I feel very self-conscious telling them that I am a writer.  To be frank, writing is very, very hard for me, even with simple things like an e-mail. The stark differences between Chinese and English grammar makes it difficult to remember all the rules. To make ...
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• True Friendship

  November 10, 2009

  • In my debut novel, Revolution is not a Dinner Party; there is a scene where Ling, the main character, watches her father burn the family's books and photos. This actually occurred in my childhood. My father, a prestigious surgeon trained by American missionaries, destroyed all his beloved books to protect our family from the zealous Red Guard. Yet he continued my education in secret, which ...
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• Ghosts of the Great Wall

  November 5, 2009

  • For three years I worked as the food editor for Martha Stewart's magazine, Body+Soul. I began with my own food column, "Yin/Yang Diner" in which I developed recipes based on the Chinese concepts of Yin/Yang balance and harmony. Before long I was asked to develop all of the recipes for each issue. Instead of trying to pre-plan each recipe, I would go to numerous grocery stores and ...
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• On Becoming a Hungry Ghost

  November 3, 2009

  • In Chinese folklore, hungry ghosts devour everything they can find and are never satisfied. We may scoff at their appalling lack of self control. Yet if we look around, how many of us have become entwined in the same fate? In the story "Tofu with Chili-Garlic Sauce" from A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts, the antagonist, Dr. Zhou surrounds himself with material goods: an expensive car, ...
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• Ghosts to My Rescue

  October 30, 2009

  • While I was writing A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts, I frequently wondered if at some time every child has fantasized about having a powerful ghost come to their aid. The brightest light in my childhood was torn from me when, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, my father was imprisoned for the "crime" of being a Western-trained surgeon. His act of loyalty, choosing to stay and help ...
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• Airing China's Dirty Laundry

  October 29, 2009

  • The last boyfriend I dated in China, before I left to attend graduate school in the US, was an army officer whose father was a general. One afternoon at work I received a distraught call from him asking to see me immediately. I met him in a park near the Seismological Bureau where I was working as an English interpreter. He arrived in his military jeep. When he stepped out, his face was ...
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• Pretending To Be A Teacher

  October 27, 2009

  • As a young girl living under the Communist system in China, nothing was more thrilling for me than breaking government rules and getting away with it. I traded ration tickets at the black market, and bought meat and eggs from the "back door," where Communist Party members obtained their fine food without the inconvenience of ration tickets or long queues.  The story "Tea ...
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