Dalian Ghost Stories

The city of Dalian has always held secrets. Its foreign colonization and occupation brought external cultures and languages to Northeast China. Great Britain, Russia, and Japan took turns dominating the region for nearly a century, influencing local folklore and religious superstitions. When the city was finally returned to native hands, China experienced numerous waves of political and social upheaval. These events made local ghost stories a taboo subject. This compilation is the first historic research of supernatural events and sightings in Dalian from 1858 to 1958. It also combines vintage colonial images with the modern photographic vision of SongLi.

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ISBN: 1441472800

Haunted Dalian

A collection of tales from a city at the crossroads of history, covering three wars and generations of occupation by colonial powers. While these ghostly sagas have all but vanished from the current social memory, the surviving oral histories have been compiled in this definitive work.

Blue Sky Red Tears: Book Two

Lin Baixue comes of age in Japan and uncovers the many secrets about her family, and how they have bound her life in a tragic web. Even her new Japanese identity becomes a harsh burden, as she is trapped by the very life she dreamed of.

Baixue's only refuge from her abusive and forced marriage is in the arms of a childhood friend. She and the young German must hide their love as they struggle to escape the destruction of the War all around them.

Everyday Dalian

A former colony briefly founded by Russia but later developed over two generations by Japan, Dalian has always been a strategic hub for control of Northeast China. SongLi's photography collection about the city and its population has won multiple international awards. Each image captures the richness and color of the modern-day Manchurian metropolis, documenting its transition over six years. The "slice of life" presentation, a hallmark style of SongLi, offers a new depth to the environments and people living in this historic port. These pictures also present an original artistic and realistic view of a community shaped by the turbulent legacy of its foreign occupation, and the aftermath of the bitter Chinese Civil War, to emerge as one of the leading cities in the country.

This book also comes with a foreword by Phil Borges. The humanitarian photographer is famous for his signature black and white portraits with hand tinted skin tones of endangered cultures around the world.

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ISBN: 0-9763168-5-4

Dairen: 1936

The South Manchurian Railway Company, formerly the largest economic enterprise in Manchuria and the main agency of Japans penetration, was organized shortly after the Russo-Japanese War. It undertook construction of towns, harbors, mining, utilities and trade. When a competing Chinese railway network threatened their monopoly, the Japanese Kwantung army staged the Manchurian Incident and set up the state of Manchukuo. At the end of World War II, China expropriated the company's vast property.

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Blue Sky Red Tears: Book One

Dairen was Japan's first colonial city in Machuria. It was a foothold for the Empire's plans of expansion in and conquest of China. But the prosperity of the 1930s was not shared by all of the colony's citizens. "Blue Sky Red Tears" follows the life of Lin Baixue. Born from a secret affair between a high ranking Japanese official and his Manchurian Chinese housemaid, Baixue struggles to find her identity within two societies that each view her as an outcast. As she comes of age, the secrets in her household continue to mount. Through her misery, Baixue dreams of a life in Japan on the eve a war that will envelop all of Asia.

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ISBN: 0-9763168-1-1
ISBN: 0-9763168-0-3
ISBN: 0-9763168-2-X