Zhanqing Du

Days Without Potato Zhanqing Du

The book is an anthology of Zhanqing Du (Dudu)'s three novels about Chinese immigrants' life, love, and perplexity. It includes "Days Without Potato," "Crystal Beads," and"Searching for Rudy." "Days without potato," written in a slight magical realistic style, embodies all perspectives of human nature, confusion, coincidence, un-predictableness, and helplessness through a variety of physiological, psychological and life changes on Ren Tianyi and Meng Qiaonan, a couple of Chinese immigrants in Canada. After Ren caused a miscarriage of his pregnant colleague by accident, he suddenly discovered a shocking secret of her family but then died mysteriously. His wife Meng had a long way to eventually adapt and turn into a mature and independent woman from a spoiled and highly dependant barbie girl. But unfortunately, she fell into a new trap after her husband's death ... "Crystal Beads" is about the life of an immigrant daughter and her mom, the love, and conflicts between culture and lifestyle, the East and the West, the elder and younger. The complexity of human natures induced all sorts of conflicts in life. Therefore the love between mom and daughter got bogged deeply in crisis. "Searching for Rudy," describes the story of an immigrant living overseas for many years, visiting her homeland and searching for her girlhood best female friend Rudy. It mainly elaborates how the tremendous changes in contemporary China have exerted a multifaceted impact on the internal world of the overseas returnees.