No comments about Deng Xiaoping: Portrait of a Chinese Statesman (Studies on Contemporary China).

5 comments about Daughter of the Yellow River.

1. Albeit it started well and gave some insight into an average family's life in China under the Gang of Four, it quickly derailed and became self-adulatory, patronizing and boring. I could not stand her own praise of her smartness, insights about life and prettiness. What's up with all those self portraits of her in different cities? As another reviewer suggested a visit to a shrink might help. To summarize, ended up being a waste of time; Don't waste your money on this book.



2. No pay no gain? No, no pain no gain. For this generation (born 1970's even 1980's) how to chase dream, complete dream, could find some clues from "Daughter of the Yellow River". For western, through Diana Lu' story to know her growing background and understand china.



3. 
   
   The book just grabbed me ...
   
   Being a fan of Eastern Phylosophies and Worlds, thsi was just my best ride. China from a point of view that is heartmoving. A distinctive culture, on stage for the world.
   
   Reading this book feels like Diana Lu is telling it live to you. It's not and easy ride since it might change the way you experience a couple of things in your life. Escpcially if your are western like me.
   
   Enjoyment and understanding of global human life at large.
   
   Incredible! Must Read! Delicate prose.



4. Buy this book--if you want to read a bizarre, narcissistic revenge fantasy. Otherwise, save your money.



5. I met the author at an entrepreneurship conference in San Francisco and found the meeting interesting enough to order the book. I found the book to be a mixture of biography, history, and motivational parables. While the biography was perhaps a bit too long, it provided a stage for discussing three very important issues. The first was the potentially destructive impact of dogmatic national policies (The Chinese Cultural Revolution) on a family at the very personal level. The second theme presented the difficulties inherent in and evolution of the relationship between Asia-born parents and their westernized children. The final theme presented the riskiness of small businesses doing business with big companies in China.

No comments about Mao.

No comments about Chinese Whispers: The Gladys Aylward story (Life Stories).

1 comments about Donors of Longmen: Faith, Politics, And Patronage in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Sculpture.

1. I purchased this book in preparation to a visit to China and in particular these caves next year. I already had some information about them but the information in this book is complete in all aspects and all details. After the visit I certainly will have to reread it so as to be able to fully enjoy it and understand the importance of this complex monument.
   
   It is a very interesting book, but probably only for those who really have a particular interest in this type of monuments and I fear not for a general visitor to China.

5 comments about The Jesuit & the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man.

1. I have always been fascinated by Teihard de Chardin. Pere Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest, geologist, palaeontologist, theologian, scholar and Christian mystic. This book is about him and the circumstances surrounding his discovery of the Peking man.
   
   Teihard de Chardin fascinates me because he tried very hard to reconcile science and religion. He felt a calling to the Church and joined the Jesuits or Society of Jesus at a very young age. In spite of his all conflicts and heartache with the Jesuits, he never did consider leaving the order. During his training as a priest, he spent 4 years as a stretcher bearer during the First World War. The horrors and inhumanity of war had a profound effect on him. He was ordained a Jesuit. Aside from a theological education, he also studied the science of geology and palaeontology. He received his PhD when he was 45 years old.
   
   Unlike many Christians, Teihard de Chardin did not find any conflicts between his belief in his Christian faith and science. He sees a convergence of both. His main thesis is that God is a God of change and all creation is in a constant flux of change until it all reaches a point of union with the One which he called the Omega Point. This means that human beings are also changing as we evolve to a higher level of consciousness. What this also means is that he embrace the theory of evolution as a theory of change. Not only do animals change or evolve but the earth itself evolves. This brings him to consider these changes as the evolution of the Noosphere.
   
   His acceptance and teaching of the theory of evolution came to the attention of the Jesuits and the Vatican. Teihard de Chardin was commanded to stop his teaching. However he was such an established scientist that the Church decided to send him as far away from civilisation as possible. They decided to send him to China! It is the greatest of irony that in China, Teihard de Chardin discovered the remains of the Peking man. The Peking man is considered scientific proof that human beings have evolved from earlier hominids. All these support evolution and are against creationism. Thus in sending him away to China, Teihard de Chardin was sent to a place to discover something the Church has wanted to avoid.
   
   Teihard de Chardin was censored by his order and not allowed to lecture and publish. Most of his books and writings are published after his death.
   
   An interesting and informative introduction to Teihard de Chardin, evolution and the Peking man.



2. This book gives a good historical background of Teilhard de Chardin's life and his struggle with the church's position and evolution.



3. I bought this book for my husband after we heard an interview with the author on NPR. He (my husband) loved it. Well written, intelligent.



4. Aczel is a master craftsman and author who describes things in prose as if you might be there. I have read each of his books and recommend them all.
   
   'The Jesuit & The Skull cogently and saliently prvides well documented discourse of how the FOOLS Across The Tiber(Vatican's Curia) operate to this very day, and is 100% correct.
   
   This latest offering Aczel is a MUST READ!



5. In his very readable The Jesuit and the Skull, Amir Aczel offers a rather sweeping account of the early and mid-twentieth century search for the "missing link," focusing in particular on the contributions of the French cleric and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In the process he discusses the history of paleoanthropology, the Scopes trial, disagreements in the scientific community over the significance of the Java Man and Peking Man fossils, and the Galileo-like struggle between de Chardin and Church authorities.
   
   The two undisputed stars of Aczel's account are de Chardin and Peking Man. In a curious manner, both suffered similar fates and similar resurrections. Both were "silenced," buried under layers of nearly impenetrable sediment, literally in Peking Man's case and metaphorically in de Chardin's when he was silenced and exiled by the Church. But both also came to light: Peking Man in 1929 when he was discovered in a cave near Beijing, and de Chardin posthumously with the publication of the thousands of pages he wrote but couldn't publish during his lifetime.
   
   Aczel's account of this chapter in the tussle between religion and science is certainly timely, and it provides a good overview of the topic. I wish, though, that he'd taken more care to explain de Chardin's unique understanding of the convergence of Christian faith and evolutionary theory. This would've made the Church's opposition more clear. Aczel focuses especially on an early essay of de Chardin's that calls the original sin doctrine into question. But this is only the tip of the iceberg of what ecclesial authorities saw as problematic in his position. Much of the book's details about the relationship between Lucile Swan and de Chardin could've been omitted to make room for this kind of discussion.
   
   Still, well worth reading. Three and a half stars.

No comments about Ding Ling and Her Mother: A Cultural Psychological Study.

5 comments about Almost a Revolution: The Story of a Chinese Student's Journey from Boyhood to Leadership in Tiananmen Square (Ann Arbor Paperbacks).

1. Too many history books deal in dry facts. This book tells the story of China and what led up to the Tiananmen Square massacre from the point of view of one young student who was pulled, sometimes against his will, into the thick of the political arena. I found it fascinating!



2. So said one of the student leaders, as quoted by Shen Tong (himself a leader) in "Almost a Revolution." This is a very fluidly written, personal account of the events leading up to the killings of workers & students by Chinese soldiers in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, on June 5 1989. Fortunately, with more recent events in Ukraine, "Soviet" Georgia, Tajikistan, even Lebanon (not forgetting Eastern Europe), we have seen how revolutions gain strength, often like tropical storms that develope into hurricanes with surprising rapidity. Meteorologically, we can explain such happening on the weather front ONCE THEY OCCUR, but we're rarely capable of predicting such developments until they are almost in our faces, so to speak. The event that sparked events in China was the death of Hu Yaobang on April 15th. "Hu Yaobang had become something of a hero since he had been made the scapegoat of the 1986 student movement and ousted as general secretary, and many of us," says the author, "had hoped that he would be brought back someday to lead China on the road to reform." Acknowledgment of his passing by many, however, soon began to be read by the government as a renewed call for reform. Thus began the chain of events that resulted in students' boycotting classes, printing flyers, and finally, camping out in Tiananmen Square. In the author's view, "there was clearly an internal struggle going on between Li Peng [a hardliner] and Zhao Ziyang [a Chinese leader who had declared on May 7th his openness to a dialogue with the students]." Evidence of such was the fact that "starting May 17, the press in China operated without censorship from the goverment for a few days." Mikhail Gorbachev had arrived for a visit 2 days earlier and the Chinese government was seemingly caught off-guard in the headlights of the world's media for a moment while it contemplated how to respond a mass protest in Beijing's central square. The one fault of this book (besides no index) is that the author has nothing to say about this visit by Gorbachev. He mentions the Soviet leader's arrival and departure, but literally nothing otherwise; no impressions or anything how such a visit affected events on the ground in Beijing, or within the corridors of the Chinese government. This was before the collapse of Eastern Europe, mind you, but I find it hard to believe that the issue of Gorbachev (glasnost/reform) wasn't a topic of discussion amongst at least some of the student leaders arrayed around Shen Tong. Back to events: Martial Law was declared on May 20. On May 21 word began to filter out that Zhao Ziyang had been removed as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (though it wasn't announced until May 26th). The crackdown came soon after, but the author wasn't as much a witness & participant to this aspect as he was in all the events leading up to it. He doesn't, consequently, write much about the tanks entering Beijing (or the famous photograph of the solitary man courageously standing his ground before one particular one), or what exactly happened that day---he doesn't even guess at how many Chinese were killed. But, this is nevertheless a remarkable story (that reads quickly & gives much interesting detail of the author's childhood, particularly as it relates to his coming to question things & the role his intellectual father had on his development). Cheers!



3. I just watched the recent Frontline about Tank Man, the man who bravely defied the line of tanks in Beijing, and went to Amazon to find books about the subject. Up came this book, among others, and I remember almost throwing it across the room over ten years ago when I read it. You have a guy who escaped, knew a few people involved, and whose only personal involvement is from the outside. He had no balls, and never dared risk himself. Sure, he knows the figureheads, the history, and can write about what happened as if was there. But he was hiding in his room, making himself out to be a hero. If you want to read a book with the only suspense being whether to finish it or not, then this is the one.



4. This book presents a good inside look at the 1989 democracy movement from the viewpoint of a key student leader. The reader learns about some aspects of the movement that have not been widely publicized, including the trials and tribulations of one of the principal organizers of the movement.
   
   Also, a good documentary film about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests is Carma Hinton's "The Gate of Heavenly Peace." A condensed version of this film was broadcast on PBS Frontline in 1996.



5. I read this book because I was very interested in the topic and event surrounding Tiananmen. I wanted to get an inside view, and in many ways did from the author. But this was more of a memoir with the democracy build up as a background. The author even talks about his first kiss in his hometown. And when he goes to university the protests are all around him, and he has friends who are putting themselves on the line, and he cares, but basically he is a distant observer. All in all, a thorough disappointment.

No comments about Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter.

5 comments about Mr. China's Son: A Villager's Life.

1. I thoroughly enjoy reading about Chinese life. I learn quite a bit about a life away from home! I prefer these types of books that whisk me to different parts of the world, chronologically, socially, and culturally. The lives that other people experience elsewhere are fascinating, and one can become engulfed in the stories. I feel as if the author sat down and TOLD me all about his life, something I didn't know about. Like I had an interesting friend over for lunch. This was a superb book to the end!



2. This book conveys so many emotions, from all of this one is left almost numb. But having met the man, He LiYi, I can say that this book is a mirror of the man in real life. All that comes out in this book is so exact, in his mannerisms and gentle voice. He is so unassuming and modest, and does not appear to be capable of such strength and determination. This book lets you see that we are all capable of making a difference if only small. I had no knowledge of this book untill I visited his cafe in Dali, I purchased the book directly from him and now pass it to all who are interested. A truly powerful book full of what these people, the Bai, have had to endure at the hands of the ever present "Mr China".



3. I think I vaguely remember seeing this book at some point in the States, before I moved to China. But if I had not walked into the author's coffee shop in Dali (Yunnan Province), I probably would not have read this book.
   
   This book is unique in several respects. First of all, it is written in English by a man who is not a native speaker, using the English he learned in University. That is quite an achievement, given the fact that he was a village peasant who did not have much money, and spent most of his life working in the fields. Another very useful feature of this book is the fact that He Liyi was detained as part of the Anti-Rightist campaign, rather than the Cultural Revolution. He was all but untouched by the Cultural Revolution, but the Anti-Rightist campaign affected him profoundly. I have long been interested in the connection between the two events, because disdain of and even abhorrence for the Cultural Revolution is established orthodoxy in China now, but I am not sure China has ever quite come to terms with the Anti-Rightist campaign.
   
   His detention seems to have broken his spirit. He relays a relationship with three women in this book. The first was the girlfriend he almost married, the second was the "ignorant" village girl he did marry, and soon divorced, and the third was the peasant woman who ultimately became his wife. The first woman disappears early in the book, but the other two figure almost throughout. Only one could be his wife, but the other remained his friend, and the warmth of their friendship underlines the pathos of a life lived in the crucible of a world gone mad.
   
   I was mad at him for marrying his first wife. Then I was mad at him for divorcing her. Then I was mad at him for refusing to take her back. My sense of pathos was brought full circle when he finally married a peasant woman and basically became her servant. Slowly the realization hit me that he really had been "emasculated" by the trauma he had suffered. I have certainly read stories of people who went through greater suffering than he did during his time of confinement. But it is not so much what he suffered, but the complete humiliation of his position, and what it did to his spirit.
   
   Mr. China's Son is a good writer. He writes in a simple, personable style that is fun to read, and very absorbing. The book is full of "Chinglish" expressions, which can be a bit misleading if you don't know a little bit of Chinese. For example, he talks about the point when their son becomes a "big school" student. He gets this expression from the literal translation of the characters. The Chinese word for "university" is daxue. The first character means "big," and the second character means "school." So in a literal sense, the term "big-school" is an accurate translation, but a bit misleading. For native speakers of Mandarin, this term does not produce a picture in the mind's eye of a big school. Rather, it induces a picture of a university, because it is, in fact, the Chinese word for university. The equivalent word in English which produces the same picture for native speakers is, of course, the word "university." So using the term "big-school" makes them sound a little bit like country bumpkins, which they were, but not for that reason.
   
   Still, I do like the Chinglish expressions. They add an interesting dimension to the book, which would be missing if they had been edited out. And the folksy style of Mr. China's writing produces a work which is unique in the English language. It actually becomes a contribution to the language, because he has found interesting ways to phrase things that native speakers may not have thought about, but which are perfectly "legal" in the grammatical sense of the term.
   
   This book is published in the United States, and I don't think it is generally available in China. While I was in Dali, I recommended it to a young Chinese lady, and told her how to get to the coffee shop. She went there, but they would not sell her a copy. They did not actually say that she could not buy it because she was Chinese, but they told her that the book was published in the United States. In other words, it is published for foreigners, not Chinese people. My suspicion is that they are being allowed to sell the book out of their store, as long as they only sell it to foreigners. I don't know that for sure; I am just guessing, but I suspect that this is the case.
   
   I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in that dark period of China's history. But I want to stress that this book is not just another "complaint" about the evils of the Cultural Revolution. It is a window into the nature of village life in China. Some of it of course, deals with the particulars with the Bai minority culture. But much of it is just a simple story about what it is like to live as a village peasant in China. Read it. It will give you a unique view of the lifestyle of folks who are usually disinclined to write about themselves.



4. I was travelling around Yunnan reading my guidebook and came across an entry for a small cafe run by a local author. I wandered into the cafe and met with the author. He was very kind. He offered me a drink and we sat and talked about his cafe and his book. I was fascinated at the posters on the walls and the reviews for his book so I had to buy a copy and find out myself.
   
   I have deep admiration for Mr. He. He suffered so much and yet perservered. I can't find any palpable animosity in his writing toward those who mistreated him. It's just amazing how humble and kind this man is.
   
   If you are interested in Chinese culture, communism, or the Cultural Revolution, you should check out Mr. China's Son. I hardly read but this book really got me on many levels.



5. Mr He Liyi has written a remarkable book. His account of toiling as a political prisoner and suffering all the excesses of China's Maoist period are as stirring as any survivor's story. He is the Robinson Crusoe of Chinese Communism; cast away in a society that persecuted him for no rational reason-yet he survived. Through intelligence, optimism, guile and pluck he constructed the tools of his survival and his family's survival.
   But what make's his account so full of life as literature is his ability to translate into English his Bai minority culture and the Han majority culture of Yunnan province. Lao He ("Old He" as I heard him respectfully called) learned English and so wrote his memoir in English. There is no assimilating translation full of Western clichés that distort and keep an author's mind distant from the reader. This is an immediate, passionate, sad and inspiring story of a man who struggled, survived and triumphed. And its funny. His `great discovery' that kept his family from starving involved stealing from community crapper. In love as a young man he is taken away, branded "An enemy of the people" and doesn't see his sweetheart again for years, until remarkable circumstances bring them together again to save the life of his child.
   I stumbled across Lao He on the Internet and sent him an e-mail. His gracious reply was all it took for my son and I to change our China travel plans to cross China on a train to see Yunnan Province and visit Lao He in Dali. After 10,000 miles of travel we got off the local bus a couple of days early at 6 am and wandered into Dali. We were standing in the middle of the street orientating our map and my son said "Maybe we'll see Mr He Liyi. Maybe that's him." The man he pointed at was young, "No he's an old man." An old man walked around the corner. "He probably looks more like that man."
   "Are you William and Bazyl?"
   He is as remarkable as his book. Anyone who loves literature should read his work, anyone who loves travel should visit Yunnan Province and sip tea in his café.