
„Hall Gardner has given us a timely and compelling narrative of two civilizations as the world witnesses rising Chinese power. A magnificent achievement.“
- Matthew Fraser, author of In Truth: A History of Lies from Ancient Rome to Modern America
Hall Gardner’s wonderful Year of the Earth Serpent Changing Colors offers an extraordinary illustration of the dynamics of humiliation and delivers a lesson the world would needs to learn. Research shows that humiliation is the most intense human emotion — it leads to the mobilisation of more processing power and a greater consumption of mental resources than any other emotion. Victims of humiliation never forget. Humiliators, on the other hand, are often oblivious of their deeds or they justify them (even while being silently consumed by their own deeds from inside). Therefore, humiliators are often shocked when confronted with the consequences of their deeds, be it revenge coming their way or attempts of peace making.
Evelin Lindner, Dr. med., Dr. psychol., founding president of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies and co-founder of the World Dignity University initiative
How much do we know about China? Year of the Earth Serpent
Changing Colors is filled with the history, politics, religion and
culture of this nation. Gardner's book is a balance between an
encyclopedia and a novel... A big country demands
a big book.
E. Ethelbert Miller
Writer and literary activist
Host of On The Margin (WPFW 89.3 FM)
Winner Howard Zinn Life Achievement Award 2022
Year of the Earth Serpent Changing Colors. A Novel.
An Anti-Marco Polo Voyage to Cathay
von Hall GardnerHired to teach English, Mylex H. Galvin records his experience in his “Anti-Marco Polo” journal after he meets expats from around the world, while trying to come to grips with the Chinese language, history, and politics.
Galvin becomes disillusioned with the poverty and environmental destruction that he finds in China; his barefoot doctor heroes are not capable of treating AIDS; Chinese and African students clash in Nanjing—with no sense of international solidarity.
As the democracy movement heats up, he is torn between the love of Tao Baiqing, a Daoist, and Mo Li, a student of English Lit, and unwittingly betrays the ties between the journalist, Hayford, and the democracy activist, Chia Pao-yu—accused of leaking “top secrets” to Hayford.
As Galvin studies China’s relations with the Western world since Marco Polo, with emphasis on the “hundred years of humiliation,” he becomes haunted by nightmares of a “clash of civilizations” and warns against a coming Apocalyptic Color War between the Balding Eagle and the Chinese Dragon—as the latter transmogrifies from Red into shades of Red-Brown-Black.