Pre-publication notice
Transit Lounge Publishing, Melbourne
For Publication October 2009
UNDER THE HUANG JIAO TREE:
TWO JOURNEYS IN CHINA
By Jane Carswell
'In mid-life Jane Carswell leaves her seemingly tranquil New Zealand home, her family and friends, to teach English in Chongqing, China. Her journey into the unknown epitomises the ache so many of us feel in our own lives for new challenges and personal understandings. Under the Huang Jiao Tree is a reflective, amusing and absorbing book about living and working in China, and the profound impact the experience has on the author’s search for connection and community. Carswell writes beautifully and entertainingly of China, of its people and her surprises and setbacks, but where her memoir stands alone is in its description of her own search for a spiritual life and practice. On return to her New Zealand life she becomes drawn to the teachings of St Benedict, and all at once the reader realises where the purity of her writing springs from: a deep well of calm, silence and belief.'
Transit Lounge Publishing, Melbourne
Book Reviews
'Jane Carswell’s account of a year teaching in a Chongqing middle school combines an acute eye for detail ...' Read further...
Professor Bill Willmott CNZM
Former Past President
New Zealand China Friendship Society
'This is a wonderful story of mid-life opportunity. Jane Carswell is a courageous woman and a spirited writer. Her book is ...' Read further...
Michael McGirr
Author of 'The Lost Art of Sleep',
'Bypass' and 'Things You Get For Free'
Bookseller+Publisher, October to November reviews
‘A light fresh memoir of a Westerner teaching in China, with insightful observations that lead to a journey of self-discovery. After throwing herself into the chaotic... ’ Read further...
Andrew Wrathall
The Sunday Age (Melbourne), 9 October 2009
‘The two journeys of the title are spatial and spiritual. Carswell was a music teacher in New Zealand, settled into middle age, but restless. She was selected ... ’ Read further...
Lucy Sussex
Launceston Examiner (Tasmania) 9 October 2009
'It’s a long way from New Zealand to China in more ways than one. The author makes this journey to teach English in a middle school in Sichuan Province ... ' Read further...
The Dominion Post (Wellington) 12 November 2009
‘A memoir by a 56-year-old Kiwi music teaching about 10 months of teaching English in China would not voluntarily make it into the teetering tower... ’ Read further...
Joanna Rix
bookshop page of New Zealand Community for ChristianMeditation website
http://www.christianmeditationnz.org.nz/bookshop.php
Ross Miller
The Age (Melbourne) 26 December 2009
'The Westerner's spiritual journey to the East has become such a cliche that any author writing on the subject must tread carefully. Jane Carswell treads not only carefully, but thoughtfully and originally. About a decade ago, New Zealander Carswell spent a year teaching English in a school in Chongqing, China. Most of the book describes that year, as she struggles with the challenges of living in a foreign land: from the practical such as unfamiliar toilets and cuisine, to loneliness and homesickness, to the extremes of cultural difference. Yet Carswell often found common ground with her Chinese students and colleagues, and was open to the different ways she encountered. This genuine openness is one of the qualities that sets Carswell's book apart. The word "journey" to describe any experience has been much abused by reality TV participants. Here, the word has real resonance. She talks of the two interrelated journeys she made: the outer and the inner. She explores her changing understanding of her identity with a light touch, never self-indulgent or didactic. On her return to New Zealand, a period that she describes only briefly, she became a Benedictine oblate. After her year away, Carswell discovered that she was a writer as well as a teacher: Under the Huang Jiao Tree is proof of that.’
Lorien Kaye
Born in England, Jane Carswell received all her schooling at St Margaret’s College in Christchurch, New Zealand where she now lives. Other homes were in Dunedin, Perugia (where she studied Italian) Waikari, Leeston and Chongqing (where she taught English). After piano lessons with Jessie Cook until she was 25, Jane began a lifelong career in teaching music. She has also worked with publishers, booksellers, lawyers, accountants, historians, real estate agents and artists, and enjoys close involvement with the New Zealand China Friendship Society, New Zealand Community for Christian Meditation, 12-step programmes and the NZ Society of Authors. She is a Benedictine oblate, is married, and has a son and daughter, a 1912 straight-strung Bechstein piano, a split-cane fly rod, and small grandchildren who are teaching her ballet. She is a regular visitor to Australia.