7.6 /10 1 Votes
Country Japan Publisher Portobello Books Published in English 01/08/07 Originally published 7 January 1995 Genre Non-fiction | 3.8/5 Goodreads Language English Publication date 01/07/1995 ISBN 978-1-84627-025-3 Published in english 8 January 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Tao: On the Road and on the Run in Outlaw China Written by Aya Goda in 2008 recounts the story of how she met her husband, his arrest by Chinese authorities and their escape to Japan. The original Japanese version of Tao was published by Bungeisyunjyu publisher in 1995, and was awarded 17th Kodansha Non-Fiction award in Japan.
Contents
Background
In the 1980s Aya Goda, a Japanese art student, traveled to China to continue her studies. In Kashgar she meet a fellow painter called Cao Yong with whom she fell in love. Yong staged an exhibition of his work in Beijing, and although highly successful, the Public Security Bureau, who handles internal policing and social order, seized and burned several of Yong's paintings, saying they were "Obscene". With that, Yong and Goda decided to travel across the country in an attempt to evade the police.
Synopsis
As people protest asking for Democracy in the cities of China and all foreigners are faced with suspicion, an adventuresome Japanese student named Aya Goda travels to the interior of China. There she meets and falls in love with Cao. After his work is banned, the police chase them across much of China and Tibet, until the Japanese embassy finally helps them escape China.
Reception
Rory MacLean writing in The Guardian said: "Tao doesn't begin well" and "For me, these first pages read like a teenage romantic novel". However he also says: "As their exhilarating, eight-month journey grows ever more dangerous, Aya writes with increasing clarity".
Colin Thubron writing for The Times said, "This, in its outlandish way, is a unique memoir. At once naive, tough, stark and sentimental, Tao recounts an eight-month rite of passage in which the reader sees, through its author’s still-innocent eyes, a Japanese art student entering an adolescent dream of love on the road".
The organisation behind World Book Day published a list of "Most Worth Talking about Books" to launch its new Spread the Word website with Tao as one of the books in the list. First published in English in 2008.
The novel was awarded the prestigious Noma Prize for Non-Fiction from Kodansha Japan's largest publisher, in 1995.