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China Homecoming
The author returns to China, to relive her memories of her youth and to witness the many historical and social changes that have taken place since she left the country in 1928.
144 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1985
About the author
Jean Fritz
97 books156 followersJean Guttery Fritz was an American children's writer best known for American biography and history. She won the Children's Legacy Literature Award for her career contribution to American children's literature in 1986. She turned 100 in November 2015 and died in May 2017 at the age of 101.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 15, 2010
What affected me the most about this book is how Jean was able to find pieces of her life and personal history by going back to China and exploring there when few white Americans were able to do so.
This is the continuation of Jean’s first novel, Homesick: My Own Story. She was born in China. Her American parents were over there working for the YMCA, and Jean lived there, in all its political turmoil and unrest, until she was 12. Both books are extremely fascinating.
China Homecoming is about her return to China as a sixty-eight-year-old woman. She rediscovered the China she’d left behind so many years ago. She also rediscovered parts of herself and her childhood.
They’re pretty much Young Adult biography/non-fiction, but I highly, highly recommend these two books. Oh, they’re so, so good!
China Homecoming has a lot to do with Chinese history and I really think it’s more interesting to adults. I wouldn’t have been as interested in this book as a child, simply because I wasn’t as into history as I am now. But really, no one should read the first and then NOT read the second.
Both of them are a must—Fritz is a wonderful storyteller.
This is the continuation of Jean’s first novel, Homesick: My Own Story. She was born in China. Her American parents were over there working for the YMCA, and Jean lived there, in all its political turmoil and unrest, until she was 12. Both books are extremely fascinating.
China Homecoming is about her return to China as a sixty-eight-year-old woman. She rediscovered the China she’d left behind so many years ago. She also rediscovered parts of herself and her childhood.
They’re pretty much Young Adult biography/non-fiction, but I highly, highly recommend these two books. Oh, they’re so, so good!
China Homecoming has a lot to do with Chinese history and I really think it’s more interesting to adults. I wouldn’t have been as interested in this book as a child, simply because I wasn’t as into history as I am now. But really, no one should read the first and then NOT read the second.
Both of them are a must—Fritz is a wonderful storyteller.
July 17, 2021
Jean Fritz’s return to the Hankou, China after so many years away. If you wondered “what happened next” when finishing Homesick: My Own Story, China Homecoming can fill in some of those pieces. When this was published in 1985, China was just becoming a tourist destination for Americans; it had just been over a decade since Richard Nixon had normalized relations between the two countries. I suppose reading this back then would have been a new and heady experience, as China probably still felt very other and distant. Now this reads like a slice of history, and could be read as such: what was China like during the early 1980s, at least seen through the eyes of an older white woman who once had lived there, still spoke the language, and loved the country dearly. Of interest only to those who read Jean Fritz’s Newbery honor winning earlier book for sure.
February 18, 2014
I think I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book because I visited China with my parents in the mid 1980s and could relate to a lot of what Jean Fritz wrote about in her book China Homecoming. Jean and her family lived in China when she was a little girl, where her American father worked for the YMCA there. After moving to the US when Jean was about 11 years old, Jean had always dreamed of going back to visit. This is a story of Jean's struggle of getting permission of going back for a visit with her husband, and of her memories of her childhood home in China when she finally realizes her dream of returning to China.
June 19, 2014
I really enjoyed this memoir of Jean Fritz's trip to China to visit the land of her childhood. Jean spent the first 10 or 12 years of her life in China with parents who were missionaries (worked for the YMCA as far as I could tell. I listened to the audio, but ordered the print version as well to get the pictures. They aren't that great, but evoke a time & culture undergoing rapid change & continuing after the Jean & her family left.
July 31, 2012
This does not really have the impact of a book, but it is a nice little coda to the wonderful Homesick. Good pictures!
July 11, 2007
I enjoyed this sequel almost as much as the first one.
January 11, 2018
China Homecoming recounts author Jean Fritz's return to China, where she was born and spent her childhood. Her visit was delightful and varied, an interesting glimpse into the nation during the mid-1980s. I found this book a charming accompaniment to the first volume, Homesick, which told the story of her time there as a child. This second volume featured nice background history of the topics and sites Fritz mentions as well as photographs taken by her husband. Jean's writing style is very accessible (she generally wrote historical fiction for school-age children). My favorite part of the book was her delight in the meaningful memories and new discoveries. These were all woven into her contemplation of the idea of hometown, a long history, and how we still have inside of ourselves the children we once were (if we are the type of grown-up, as she puts it, that wants to retain their childhood). This was not a groundbreaking memoir per say but a very pleasant personal reflection.
July 25, 2017
Fritz was born in China but her missionary parents brought her to the U.S. when she was 12. Some 50 years later, she and her husband return to her birthplace, where she attempts to reconnect with some of the people and places she left behind. Illustrated with photographs by her husband, this book is written for older children but adults interested in China should find it interesting.
August 2, 2009
True story of Jean Fritz (born of American parents)but born and grew China. When her family moved back to America (she was 13)she could not forget the China she left behind. Her struggle to return and how China had changed makes good reading.
June 8, 2018
This was an interesting recollection of China in the early part of the 20th century.
April 13, 2020
The author, Jean Fritz, was born in what is now Hankou, China, in 1915, and lived there with her American parents until age 13. She went on to write the Newbery Honor book Homesick, about her childhood there. I haven't read Homesick, but found this follow-up to be interesting enough that I plan to seek it out.
China Homecoming details the author's efforts to travel back to China in the mid-1980s. Accompanied by her husband, she uncovered many childhood memories in the Hankou and Wuhan area, while getting a chance to explore how the China of her childhood had changed after about half a century, much of it spent in war and hardship.
Much of the book is a fairly straightforward travelogue, but the author's enthusiasm really won me over. This is very much a love-letter to the city of Wuhan (which made it a particularly compelling read at this time), and there is a great sense of wonder and discovery in even the simplest details.
Fritz also does a good job of incorporating Chinese history into the narrative, and she does not shy away from the realities of war and the Cultural Revolution. There are not a lot of twists or what would be considered major plot developments, but there are lots of unexpected and touching small moments.
China Homecoming details the author's efforts to travel back to China in the mid-1980s. Accompanied by her husband, she uncovered many childhood memories in the Hankou and Wuhan area, while getting a chance to explore how the China of her childhood had changed after about half a century, much of it spent in war and hardship.
Much of the book is a fairly straightforward travelogue, but the author's enthusiasm really won me over. This is very much a love-letter to the city of Wuhan (which made it a particularly compelling read at this time), and there is a great sense of wonder and discovery in even the simplest details.
Fritz also does a good job of incorporating Chinese history into the narrative, and she does not shy away from the realities of war and the Cultural Revolution. There are not a lot of twists or what would be considered major plot developments, but there are lots of unexpected and touching small moments.
May 10, 2021
Jean Fritz lived the first 13 years of her life as a missionary kid (MK) in China. This book is sort of the sequel to her book, Homesick, in that she actually, finally, gets to go "home" for a visit. One of the hardest questions to answer for anyone who has lived outside of their passport country is "where are you from?" This book seemed to encapsulate this. I loved this book, and it really resonated with me. It was a quick read (okay, a quick listen). I cannot speak to her accuracy on historical events and related things, but I wasn't reading it for a history lesson.
January 20, 2024
I read this book right after reading Katherine Paterson's memoir which are quite similar in the sense that they were both written by American, female, white authors of children's books who have ties to China. I enjoyed Jean Fritz's more, as Katherine Paterson was more about her overall life and not focused on her experience in China, but Jean Fritz's was. I almost felt envious of China for having such a celebrated author who is so fond of China that she feels like homecoming when she visited China over fifty-years later.
January 12, 2019
I wish this book was meatier, only because I am longing for more detail and more content from this charming author who had such a unique experience. The prequel (Homesick) was one of my favorite books growing up, and together this set mirrors my own life in many ways. It’s a fascinating snapshot of part of China’s history, and it’s magical through Jean’s eyes. Required reading for adult TCKs.
May 30, 2019
A moving personal story with a lot of references to China’s history
August 3, 2019
It’s a travelogue jumbled together with pieces of memory decades old set in China, and it’s short! What could be better?
August 24, 2020
Mostly Crap.
I am sure there were some parts of this book that were interesting, but I could not be bothered to dig that much. This is the story of a woman who grew up as a missionary in Wuhan until she was a teenager, left and then, as an adult wrote a book about it, and then went back to China.
The thing that bothered me most about this book is the history. She is a shitty historian who gets some things wrong. But the problem is that, this book is so short that, without the history parts, it really would not have been a book, rather just a long magazine article.
Well, Fritz should have just left it as a magazine article.
I am sure there were some parts of this book that were interesting, but I could not be bothered to dig that much. This is the story of a woman who grew up as a missionary in Wuhan until she was a teenager, left and then, as an adult wrote a book about it, and then went back to China.
The thing that bothered me most about this book is the history. She is a shitty historian who gets some things wrong. But the problem is that, this book is so short that, without the history parts, it really would not have been a book, rather just a long magazine article.
Well, Fritz should have just left it as a magazine article.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews