Alice's Adventures in Chinaland

Alice’s Adventures in Chinaland is the first and only full-length novel written by the great literary master Congwen Shen. Drawing inspiration from the techniques and style of the classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Shen brings Miss Alice, the young English girl, and Mr. John Noshey, the gentlemanly rabbit, on a journey into China. Together they travel through the great cities and remote villages of the land, encountering things laughable, strange, and astonishing. At last, in the region of western Hunan where the Miao people live, they witness the inhuman cruelty of the slave trade, and only then do they leave China in sorrow. Through the eyes of Alice and her rabbit companion, the novel delivers a sharp critique and biting satire of Chinese society in the 1920s—its ignorance, superstition, stagnation, and darkness… Read more