Watching the Tree: A Chinese Daughter Reflects on Happiness, Spiritual Beliefs and Universal Wisdom - Hardcover

Yen Mah, Adeline

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002570998 ISBN 13: 9780002570992

Publisher: Harper Collins, 2000

Synopsis

Author of bestselling Falling Leaves weaves together for the same audience her own personal experiences with the best of Chinese philosophy.

Adeline Yen Mah, whose autobiography, Falling Leaves, is an international bestseller, here interweaves her own experiences with her views on Chinese thought and wisdom to create an illuminating and highly personal guide for Western readers.

Adeline Yen Mah was born in Tianjin, and through the conversations and wisdom of her grandfather and aunt learnt a great deal of traditional Chinese thought, history and religion. Through her father’s second marriage, to a Eurasian woman, and their subsequent move to Hong Kong, she learnt more about the Chinese attitudes to business and to family, and the strength of the Chinese in exile.

Since living in London and California, Adeline Yen Mah has studied Chinese thought, looking at both the strengths and weaknesses which it gives those who follow it and now, in Watching the Tree, she takes us on a journey through the Chinese language, religions, history, using both Chinese proverbs and her own experiences, to bring to us an understanding of the richness of China and the ways that we can take and use some of the wisdom for ourselves in the West.

About this title

About the Author

Adeline Yen Mah was born in Shanghai, studied in London, and now works and lives in California. She is married with two children.

From the Back Cover

'Once there was a boy who was told by his master to catch a hare. He went into the woods and looked around. Lo and behold, he saw a hare running along at full speed. As he watched in astonishment, the hare ran smack into a tree and knocked itself unconscious. All the boy had to do was to pick it up. For the rest of his life, the boy waited behind the same tree in the hope that more hares would do the same thing.'

The only thing that does not change is that everything changes

Over one million readers world-wide discovered Adeline Yen Mah through her first book, 'Falling Leaves'. They will welcome this intensely personal interpretation of Chinese wisdom and beliefs.

Reflecting on her own experience of what she herself found most precious as she grew up in China, Adeline Yen Mah shares with us her views of Chinese Philosophy, history and language and shows how those in the west can benefit from the east.

Adeline Yen Mah absorbed Chinese traditions through conversations with her grandfather and her aunt. Those teachings have played an important role in her understanding of Chinese thought and inspired the original interpretation of ancient books such as 'I Ching' and 'Tao Te Ching'.

'Watching the Tree' is the chronicle of one woman's spiritual journey interwoven with the concepts of China's greatest thinkers, illuminated by true stories from Adeline Yen Mah's past.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Collins
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0002570998
• ISBN 13: 9780002570992
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248