Shouhua Qi and His Novel " When the Purple Mountain Burns"

Have you read the Chinese-American professor Shouhua Qi's novel " When the Purple Mountain Burns"---- a perfect historical novel about " The Rape of Nanking"(1937-1938) occurring in China--- a nightmare-like trauma to Chinese today!

He writes in Chinese and English with simple style for the sake of historical accuracy, knitting the different cultures into one wonderful book: the Chinese culture of ages and cultures of Japan, Germany and America. The writing is remarkably tinged with excellent Chinese poems and tales as well as the beautiful Japanese kimono. We can hear the writer shouting at those beast-like soldiers and weeping with the weaponless Chinese. He breathes with them and even gets under their skin just to make his characters life-like! Some international friends like Minnie and Wilson risk helping the Chinese and they pray for the "peace"--- a moving idea from the writer's heart!

Now that we all long for happy life, why not act to make peace? The end of the novel is poetic because of pure snow that will purify the nasty world! Oh, his language is exquisite and his writing is so rhythmic!

Closing the book after my tearful reading, I feel my heart is imbued with strong sympathy, indescribable pity and intense craving for long peace of future!

It's a piece of good news that this challenging novel is published in America, China and Hong Kong. It is written for all the people in the world to call for peace!