Huan Hsu - The Porcelain Thief

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.4thestate.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2015

First published in the United States by Crown in 2015

Copyright © Huan Hsu 2015

Huan Hsu asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Cover design by Sarah Greeno

Cover shows details from a Dish decorated with a lake scene with terraces, pavilions and pagodas, from Jingdezhen, China, Qing Dynasty, 1644-1911 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Details from a porcelain vase with underglaze blue decoration, 1662–1722, Chinese School, Qing Dynasty, 1644-1912 © Cleveland Museum of Art, OH, USA/Gift of Mrs E. S. Burke, Jr./Bridgeman Images; Details from a vase from Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi Province, China, 1662-1722 © V&A Images/Alamy; Details from a Jingdezhen Ware Beaker © Royal Ontario Museum/Corbis

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007479436

Ebook Edition © March 2015 ISBN: 9780007479429

Version: 2015-02-27

To my family,

the treasure I always had,

and to Jennifer,

the treasure I never expected to find

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

Family Tree

Map 1 China: My Journey Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

Map 2 Liu Feng Shu’s Journey Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

Map 3 Poyang Floodplain Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

PROLOGUE

1. THIS IS CHINA

2. A CHICKEN TALKING WITH A DUCK

3. LIU FENG SHU

4. PANDA CHINESE

5. THE ORPHAN

6. STREET FIGHT

7. JOURNEY TO THE WEST

8. THE REAL CHINA

9. END OF PARADISE

10. FROM FAR FORMOSA

11. CITY ON FIRE

12. FALLING LEAVES RETURN TO THEIR ROOTS

13. ALL DEATH IS A HOMECOMING

14. NANJING

15. NORTHERN EXPEDITION

16. A STUMBLE FROM WHICH THERE IS NO RECOVERING

17. THE NINE RIVERS

18. THE LONG VALLEY

19. XINGANG MARKS THE SPOT

20 CHASING THE MOON FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

Picture Section

A Note on Sources

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Publisher

THIS BOOK RECOUNTS MY TIME IN CHINA FROM 2007 TO 2010, and then the summer and fall of 2011. Although this is a work of nonfiction, any attempt to reconstruct recent history is inherently subjective, and my guiding principle was to tell a coherent story about China, my family, and my search for my great-great-grandfather’s buried porcelain. Many of the people and places in this book were visited a number of times over many years. For the sake of narrative logic, I have in some instances compressed the time between these encounters, omitted extraneous details, or explained information out of time with its revelation to me. However, descriptions of people, places, or encounters themselves have not been altered, and the dialogue was recorded either as it happened or soon thereafter.

A word on translations: Many of my conversations with Chinese speakers took place in Mandarin Chinese. When translating the conversations, I tried to be faithful to my partner’s intended meaning and re-create it as I understood it in everyday English while also preserving the unique qualities of their speech. The instances where Chinese speakers use English are noted as such. I have used pinyin transliterations except for names commonly spelled otherwise, such as Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen, and the members of my family who write their names according to Wade-Giles conventions.