Rating: 
Summary: big disappointment
Review: As a Chinese-American who has lived in China for years, and who is thinking about adopting a girl from China, this book sounded very interesting to me but I could not even finish reading it. It's not worth the time.I agree with the negative reviews below on two issues: 1) It is questionable whether a five-year-old should be exposed to the harsh reality about her past; 2) The book is thin on facts and has too much mother's musings and her interpretations of the daughter's feelings and thoughts. I have no idea how accurate these interpretations were, and as a result I have no idea how the daughter actually felt about this experience. But there is more. The book is not even a good travel monologue. First, the book is full of factual errors. To give a few examples, the powerful Shanghai gangster's name is Du Yuesheng, not Yu Dusheng; Chinese kids start school at the age of six, not seven; to "translate" English into pinyin, as the teacher at LuLu's preschool did for the author (so we are told), is totally meaningless. Chinese people don't read pinyin. pinyin is a method to help school kids learn the pronunciations of the Chinese characters. Second, two months' time is too short to understand China, and it shows in the book. The author claims she loves China. But she loves China because China is exotic to her. China in her book is simply a stereotypical Communist country with nice but simple people, One hardly sees a country shaped by its rich cultural and historical heritage and the complexity of its people. Numerous places in the book showed that the author judges things by what she knows about America, such judgments don't help one to understand a different culture. If one really wants to read a book about China that's perceptive and insightful, without prejudice and without being judgmental, if one wants to forget about his race, background and political preferences and wants to understand the Chinese as fellow human beings, please read Peter Hessler's Two Years on the Yangtze and Mark Salzman's Iron and Silk. I give the book 2 stars insteadof one because it has a story in it that's worth knowing. But the author should have written a 10-page article instead of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: A Moving and Beautiful Book
Review: As a person who knows a little girl who was adopted recently from Anhui province, I found this book very moving. Not only was it very beautiful and emotional, it also was very interesting. After reading it, I grew to love the characters, especially LuLu, TohToh, and JingJing, and felt like I knew them. The author did a wonderful job of telling this story.
Rating:
Summary: A Moving and Beautiful Book
Review: As a person who knows a little girl who was adopted recently from Anhui province, I found this book very moving. Not only was it very beautiful and emotional, it also was very interesting. After reading it, I grew to love the characters, especially LuLu, TohToh, and JingJing, and felt like I knew them. The author did a wonderful job of telling this story.
Rating: 
Summary: Musings And Rantings -- AND CONJECTURE
Review: As the parent of a child adopted from China, I found this book highly contrived and genunely offensive on a variety of levels. First, and foremost, it is an intimate account of the psyche of a FIVE YEAR OLD CHILD adopted from China and her feelings about her adoption. But not by the child, by her mother. This is ridiculous and impossible and an invasion of the child's very soul. And her privacy What will this girl think of her mother's convoluted conjecture about the way in which she felt -- and behaved -- when she was in kindergarten as this kid grows up? This is a powerful subject: taking an internationally adopted child back to the country and culture in which she was born and now the author has RUINED any chances of ANYONE ever writing another book on the subject again -- and writing it with or on behalf of a child who is mature enough to consent to the work. Thumbs down. Don't honor this book by purchasing it asks this adoptive parent!
Rating: 
Summary: At last a writer on the subject, not a propagandist.
Review: As the parent of a Chinese girl, I've long been waiting for a book that transcends the mushy pamphleteering put out by the adoption crowd, and here it is--at last a real writer on the Chinese and on adoption, not a propagandist! Ms. Prager has the rotten luck to arrive at Lulu's home town of Wuhu two days before the US bombs the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, an event of cataclysmic proportion for the Chinese and one that covers her trip with an ominous cloud. Nevertheless, the game part of Ms. Prager prevails over the fearful one as she pushes ahead, providing readers a hilarious and at-times haunting and harrowing view of the whole rainbow of characters that make up the Chinese personality. Here's the ferocious gatekeeper of the orphanage chasing after Lulu who scoots right past him into the place; the glowering old Maoist who can't get used to Westerners wandering around freely; the heroically understanding teacher at Lulu's ad hoc school who forgives Lulu and Emily everything, even the American bomb; the Disneyland architecture, the surreal public parks. Ms. Prager presents the Chinese people as both a treat and a nightmare, intriguing in either case. For anyone planning to go there, with or without an adopted daughter, it's the the most profitable bit of reading you can do.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written
Review: Beautifully written descriptions from an American's point of view on rural China. I felt like I was on the journey with them. It was eye opening in the fact that Emily was the minority in her daughter's country and her daughter LuLu blended in well in the local school and hotel. Emily describes her language and cultural barriers. It took alot of courage for her to take the trip to live there. I would love to see her visit China again to write a second book in another 5 years when her daughter is a pre-teen. If she did that, I am sure her daughter wouldn't fit in to the local community as she did when she was 4-5 years old.
Rating:
Summary: sad,moving and hilarious
Review: Emily Prager is an accomplished author who has written an exceptionally insightful diary about her two months in China with her adopted Chinese daughter Lulu. Prager has a unique affinity for China since she spent several formative years of her own childhood there and she is able to draw connections to her own past while guiding her daughter as she makes her own journey. She casts a sharp,ironic eye towards some of the unfathomable efforts of the Chinese to "Westerize"--a petting zoo becomes,through a confusion of translation,a zoo of caged cats and dogs--not animals to be petted. Her observations of what it is like to live in a country not dominated by insurance liability are hilarious. "Wuhu Diaries" is a personal,candid,record--sharply observed,moving and funny. Great reading for anyone interested in the daily, sometimes surreal life of modern China.
Rating:
Summary: A Journey of Courage
Review: Emily Prager's account of her trip to Wuhu with her daughter Lulu is a tribute to her awareness of her daughter's need to make real some vague images and feelings about her birthparents, birthplace and Chinese identity. Lulu was not too young (as one reviewer mentioned) to be taken on this journey. What a five-year-old learns from such a trip is different from what a ten-year-old learns, but that does not invalidate the younger child's experiences. It seems to me it took great courage for Ms. Prager to take her daughter on a journey that was surely quite difficult, both physically and emotionally. The book is a moving and honest account of their stay and the relationships they developed while living in a relatively isolated city with few other foreigners. The descriptions of everyday life--what they ate, their experiences at the hospital, at the nursery school, etc--are precisely what makes this book compelling reading. It is not a romantic depiction of China but an honest attempt to live among the people that share with her daughter their biological roots and to give her some concrete notion of where she is from. This is a personal journey, and I doubt it is meant to be read in any other way. I think it is a terrific book. What we take away from it is the basic humanity we share with people around the world, regardless of their ethnic or racial background. Certainly a timely message.
Rating:
Summary: big disappointment
Review: Emily Prager's two months' experience living in a small town in Southern China is very real to me. It brought me back all the memories of my life from birth to adulthood living in China. I left China in September, 1993 and have lived in US since then. Her story is very real and nothing in her book is an imagination. The China in her book is the real modern China. By reading her book, I get a chance to look at China in a "foreign" view, which is humorous at some places. She showed me in her book what a mature woman she is, who is graceful and has a lot of wisdom from her life experience. Her love to her daughter moves me very much. Her compassion to the Chinese people and her great understanding of the cultural difference between China and US is greatly appreciated. I admire her because she is a loving person with great wisdom shown in her book. As a young working mother with two kids, I have a lot to learn from her. If every one could be as conscious as she is to deal with the racism both in US and China with understanding and compassion, I believe we human being can live together peacefully in this world.
Rating:
Summary: A beautifully written book
Review: Emily Prager's two months' experience living in a small town in Southern China is very real to me. It brought me back all the memories of my life from birth to adulthood living in China. I left China in September, 1993 and have lived in US since then. Her story is very real and nothing in her book is an imagination. The China in her book is the real modern China. By reading her book, I get a chance to look at China in a "foreign" view, which is humorous at some places. She showed me in her book what a mature woman she is, who is graceful and has a lot of wisdom from her life experience. Her love to her daughter moves me very much. Her compassion to the Chinese people and her great understanding of the cultural difference between China and US is greatly appreciated. I admire her because she is a loving person with great wisdom shown in her book. As a young working mother with two kids, I have a lot to learn from her. If every one could be as conscious as she is to deal with the racism both in US and China with understanding and compassion, I believe we human being can live together peacefully in this world.
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