No comments about Madame Mao.

2 comments about A Thousand Miles of Dreams: The Journeys of Two Chinese Sisters.

1. Professor Welland proves that extensive research and good storytelling are not mutually exclusive, which does not hold true for many of the academic books I have read. This book is unmistakably academic, with Welland adding a scholarly and critical perspective to the events she describes, but that is certainly not a bad thing. Layered with incredible detail, her graceful writing style made the stories of both her ancestors, and the search to reconcile their differences, extremely engaging. Certainly a worthwhile read for anyone interested in Chinese history.



2. Amy was my Grandmother and I learned so much about my family history from Sasha's book. I loved the exploration of the truth between the stories that we heard growing up and Sasha's extensive research on the reality of the stories. I loved Sasha's book and consider it an important part of my roots.

4 comments about Charlie Two Shoes and the Marines of Love Company.

1. Charlie Two Shoes and the Marines of Love Company is not only an inspiring story about friendships and loyalty, but also an excellent retelling of some little known American history. Set in Northern China starting at the end of World War II and continuing to recent times, the reader will learn about the atrocities visited upon the Chinese peasantry by the Japanese, the communist take over of China and America's futile efforts to stop it, the severe poverty and starvation the Chinese people endured, and the political repression and corruption that continued for years. Into the shadows of these desolate and hopeless conditions, the warmth and charity that the American Marines and missionaries brought with them to China and to a young boy, nick-named Charlie, shine brightly. The reader is invited on a journey through Charlie's life of joys and travails, but is pulled aside by the authors from time to time for some excellent and concise description of the historical context. Thus this true tale of friendship and suffering also enables the reader to also learn the larger story of the historical events which ultimately were its cause.



2. Charlie Two Shoes is a fascinating story of one man's friendship with a group of US Marines and his incredible perseverence in getting re-united with them. Peterson and Perlmutt tell the story through Charlie's eyes and those of his Marine pals. They give us an intriguing look at life behind the Bamboo Curtain. More amazing than Charlie's budding friendship -- he was around the Marines for about four years as a teenager -- is his enduring perseverance in keeping his dream of a reunion alive. The dream survived decades, including years in a Chinese prison and more under house arrest in his small village. After all that, his eventual reunion in the U.S. had drama of its own. One Marine buddy turned out to be more interested in his own fortunes than Charlie's,and Charlie's efforts to stay got mired as much in domestic politics as international. A good read by gifted writers.



3. My boyfriend bought me this book for Christmas, and I was thrilled. Not only am I a social studies teacher and a history buff, but I am priviledged enough to know Charlie Two Shoes. He owns a business in the town where I live and is always there with a smile and a friendly word. He autographed my book with the inscription "May God bless you and yours with health and joy." When I went by today to thank him for the inscription, he told me that there is a lot of history in this book that is not often told. While I have not yet finished the book, I have enjoyed what I have read so far. No matter what crimes have been committed by one of the authors, you should take the time to buy this book and read the interesting true life story of a truly wonderful man.



4. A fascinating and inspirational account of Tsui Chi Hsii's (Charlie Two Shoe's) long-suffering odyssey to come to the United States with his family. It turns out to be a lot more complicated story than you might expect and has the potential for being a Hell of a movie, with lots of opportunities for scenery chewing, but that probably won't happen. In fact there probably won't even be any paperback updating of the still unfinished story at time of publication because one of the coauthors, Michael Peterson, is now a convicted murderer whose other books are long out of print.
   
   Life is truly stranger than fiction.

3 comments about To The Storm: The Odyssey of a Revolutionary Chinese Woman.

1. I just read this book and I cannot begin to describe the author, Yue Daiyuan's experiences and anguish during both the Anti-Rightist movement and Cultural Revolution in China. Her story is compelling and also reveals how indoctrinated and committed the young people during the early PRC period were to Communism and Mao Zedong. The book is one long record of the sad and horrendous events that were committed in the name of Revolution. If you're interested in modern Chinese history, this book is a must read since it provides so much first person account of what took place during the senseless period of the 1960's known as the Cultural Revolution.



2. The book was first published in 1985 and I had owned a used copy for at least 15 years but never read beyond a few pages. About a week ago I went to check who the author was on the internet and then dusted the book out and read through to the end. In the book is one of the most trustworthy account of what the political and social life was like in the Mao era, from the founding of the PRC to the post-Mao "Democracy Wall" Movement. The author, a teacher and now a Professor at Peking University had lived through all the political campaigns of the era. She didn't just write catering to the interests of Western readers, like quite a few did. Yet the honest account proves more convincing therefore more damning to the ludicrous and absurd combination of radicalist experiments and power struggles. A famous passage from the Chinese writer Wang Meng quoted at the beginning of the book sets the tone for the whole book:
   
   I have walked through these twenty-one years one step at a time, and I am convinced that not a single step was taken in vain. My only wish is that we firmly remember this lesson paid for in blood, tear, hardship, and unimaginable suffering so that the actual situation can recover its true features and be recorded in the annals of history.
   
   If you are interested in the era, the book is valuable. There probably isn't a Chinese translation of the book and I can guess why. I salute to this strong and courageous woman, now around 75 years old.



3. At first, Yue Daiyun and her husband were both relatively successful academics, professors at Beida University in Beijing. Yue's father-in-law was a well-respected and wealthy authority on Buddhism, an honored acquaintance of Mao Zedong himself, who had read his books. They were third-generation academics, more middle-class than Communist, yet devoted Party activists.
   
   Because of Yue's history and worldview, her autobiography definitely feels intellectual and academic. There is a very helpful Chronology section, a timeline so that the events of Yue's life can be seen in the context of Chinese history. Her account attempts to make sense out of both the events of her life and of the revolution. She was very aware of current events and what the future might have brought. She kept up with the news and public opinion. Yue's story combines the account of a guardedly emotional and psychological personal life with a very historical feel, as if she was recounting everything important that had happened. It is a shocked and forced coping with the kind of revolution she never could have predicted, that eventually made enemies even of devoted vanguard revolutionaries such as herself.
   
   Yue saw Jiang Qing (Mao's wife) as somewhat petty, since Jiang "furiously" publicly attacked a member of her own family with only spurious justification:
   
   "Hearing her talk on and on about such family members, I wondered how I could ever admire Jiang Qing as a revolutionary leader when she seemed so concerned with personal vendettas (p. 164)."
   
   Like many traditional Chinese, Yue considered family very important, and didn't partake in such vendettas even when her sister-in-law provided ample opportunity to.
   
   This is not a coming-of-age story. Yue came of age before Mao's revolution and the Cultural Revolution that followed, so she was initially surprised by the depths of disloyalty her comrades sank to in order to protect themselves. She did not consider such supposedly revolutionary backstabbing as socially expected like later generations would. Yet Yue kept a strangely unshakable faith in the allegedly revolutionary process of ruining individuals for the sake of the revolution, even when it was her who was denounced and punished. She never even questioned such rampant political scapegoating at all until long after she became a victim herself. Yue saw the effects of chaotic revolution gone violently wild, where even those who risked their lives working against the Guomindang were later condemned as enemies of the people.
   
   China was mostly a country of peasants. Mao was born and raised a peasant. So the purging and oppressive manipulation of the small and elite academic class was an ongoing struggle throughout her life. At one point she is condemned for Rightist tendencies. Later her husband, politically almost identical to Yue, is condemned for being too Leftist. Go figure. They survive decades of anti-academic purges and will-breaking programs designed to make them into impoverished peasants. The way that they survive throughout all the upheavals is inspiring, at times upsetting, but provides a detailed and cogent criticism of Maoism, although Yue remains a Marxist intellectual until the end.
   
   Like Out of the Night: The Memoir of Richard Julius Herman Krebs alias Jan Valtin (NABAT), this is an honest revolutionary's diary of self-deception and survival. Highly recommended to anyone interested in revolutionary politics, who wants to avoid the mistakes of the past.

No comments about China Ink: The Changing Face of Chinese Journalism.

5 comments about The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, the Marvelous Chinese Conjurer.

1. Really a wonderful book. As in "hiding the Elephant" Steinmeyer gives a vivid description of what was the magic business in the early years of the 20th century. The style is pleasant and quick to read. The hystorical details are all referenced. Really a must have if you are interested in the history of this wonderful art.



2. This book is about the world of magic in the early 1900's full of illusion and sometimes deception at the time vaudeville was being formed. Described as a combination of minstrel (Al Jolson), circus (fire-breathing acts), and variety saloons (singing, dancing), along comes William E. Robinson who leads a double life.
   
   He'd been the backstage manager for Hermann the Great, America's #1 magician, and married his assistant. They re-invented themselves as the "Marvelous Chinese Conjurer," Chung Ling Soo, and Suee Seen (Water Lily). He was a New Yorker and performed in the Black Art act, costumed as a king at the Bijou before he went out on his own. Harry Kellar, born in Erie, Pennsylvania, was the #2 magician at the time.
   
   As the Chinese marvel, Robinson wore an oriental costume with long pig-tail and slippers with up-turned toes. London had a whole troup of Chinese performers led by Ling Soo, and they arrived at the theaters in a long red Panhard touring car, top down, in style. In England, he also formed a second family with wife, Lou, and three children, Hector, Mary, and Ellsworth.
   
   There is a picture on p. 387 of him in costume, about to catch the bullet with a porcelian plate, the act in which he was killed. After his death, an investigation revealed the deception played out on the world stage, not just Amreica.



3. I don't give out a lot of 5 star reviews. This book gets 5 stars from me because of 3 reasons:
   
   1) It's a great story about a complicated and interestingly flawed person. Will Robinson was an ambitious showman, who recoginzed the flaws in his professional self and worked tirelessly to overcome them, but failed to overcome the flaws in his personal self, leaving an estranged wife and an abandoned son behind him. That he's a world-class illusionist and turn of the century entertainer makes him a lot more interesting.
   
   2) The author is a great historical writer, and he brings turn of the 20th century vaudeville to life in a real page-turning way. He does a great job exploring not just the main character and his wives and children, but the giants of magic at the time. Will Robinson spent a lot of time going back and forth between the two greatest magicians of the day, who were also bitter rivals. You learn so much good stuff about Kellar and Herrmann that the book feels like it's two or three books in content, without being two or three books in length. The author must've worked really hard to keep the book this packed and this short and accessible.
   
   3) And to me, this is what earned the 5th star in a big way: the author actually explains how the cutting edge (at the time) illusions worked. In detail. With no warnings about how "the brotherhood of magicians would kill me if they knew" or other such blather. He warns us at the beginning that illusionists don't protect the secrets from the audience, but the audience from the secrets. Once you know how it's done, you a) don't enjoy the trick anymore and b) feel foolish for not figuring it out yourself. So, knowing that ahead of time, when he reveals all the ingenious stuff the magicians build and skills they learn, he does it in a way that makes you feel like an insider, like a performer or production assistant. It makes you (well, it made me... your mileage may vary) feel like a part of the story somehow, since the discovery, invention, and espionage behind illusions is an important, sexy, and treacherous part of being a professional conjurer in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
   
   Anyway, that's why I love the book and give it a perfect score. Can't wait for his next one.



4. Jim Steinmeyer gives us a labor of love with this fantastic book. For the professional or the curious, the book tells the story of magic during that exciting time of Keller, Herrmann, and Houdini (and many others)from the perspective of a man who touched the lives of each of them and contributed to their success as magicians. Only someone with the technical and historical knowledge and experience of Steinmeyer could explain the life of William Robinson aka Chung Ling Soo in the depth and with the understanding that this book achieves.



5. I'm puzzled by the many rave reviews for this book, which I enjoyed but found took effort to get through. The book reads like a list of stories about Robinson's life, told without the benefit of insight into the magician's psyche, and lacking much of a plot or theme to pull them into a continuous whole. At times the book seems to be a collection of loosely related encyclopedia entries. Moreover, the writing style is overly simple and lackluster, as if dumbed down. Fortunately, the stories are often interesting -- the tales of the Great Lafayette are entertaining.

2 comments about Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era.

1. The American market has been flooded with memoirs from the Mao era that present this time, especially the Cultural Revolution years, as a purely dark, depraved, and tragic age with nothing but victims and victimizers, inhumanity, cruelty, and sexual repression. The editors of this volume, in their probing introductory essay, have no quarrel with these individuals representing their tragic experiences through memoirs, but do take issue with the assumption that many Westerners (and in some cases the authors of these other memoirs) take for granted, that is, that these victim/victimizer memoirs speak for all Chinese women who grew up in this era. The authors of these nine chapter length memoirs grew up in big cities in China during the Mao era, and all have gone on to PhDs and American professorships. While they note that this makes themselves unrepresentative in a sense, they are representative in that the vast majority of urban women were never victims or victimizers during the Cultural Revolution. These authors have both good and bad memories, were both harmed and empowered by the state's official ideology, and experienced personal growth.

   One of the authors mentions that American friends act almost disappointed when she tells them she has no personal horror story to share. The editors mention a revealing anecdote from an American academic conference in 1999 titled "Memory and Cultural Revolution". During the Q&A session, someone said that their memory of the period did not coincide with the panel's wholly gloomy and tragic view, rather they recalled a high and youthful spirit, and that they were neither victim nor victimizer. The chair of the panel condescendingly dismissed this by saying that some Holocaust survivors are nostalgic for their camp days too. Thus, no more time needed to be wasted on such invalid memories, and the panel moved on with their discussion of politically correct memory. These authors simply want to add their experiences, and their astute and balanced analysis into the mix.

   All nine memoirs are high quality and raise our understanding of what it was like for an average girl/young woman in urban China in the 1960s-70s, and they raise important philosophical and sociological questions about gender. Many are moving while always avoiding pretentiousness. Moments of humor are common. Horror story memoirs are sadly true, but the other reality is people laughed, children played, parents and children argued and bonded, adults gossiped, youth aspired, friendships formed, people worked, students studied (usually), performers performed, farmers farmed, and ordinary people lived their lives. These memoirs, being full of rich, colorful details of family and neighborhood life, increase our knowledge of Chinese culture as well as the Cultural Revolution.

   Here is a brief description of each memoir. This by no means does them justice.

   Naihua Zhang -- "In a World Together Yet Apart: Urban and Rural Women Coming of Age in the Seventies" -- tells a moving story of life long bonds formed with 2 rural young women after being sent to the countryside.

   Wang Zheng -- "Call Me 'Qingnian' But Not 'Funu': A Maoist Youth in Retrospect" -- shares rich details of her happy childhood during the CR, then applies her scholarly expertise (women's studies) to her own life coming of age as a young woman in a time of empowering feminist ideology, yet continuing influence of older cultural assumptions about gender. Insights abound.

   Xiaomei Chen -- "From 'Lighthouse' to the Northeast Wilderness: Growing Up Among the Ordinary Stars" -- was the daughter of two elite theatre stars who were persecuted during the CR. She nevertheless had a "happy, even exhilarating childhood, though I was not spared growing pains", including a sent-down experience where she got to understand ordinary people in the countryside via work as a reporter.

   Bai Di -- "My Wandering Years in the Cultural Revolution: The Interplay of Political Discourse and Personal Articulation" -- Bai, who is from Harbin in northern China, discusses, among other things, how the CR impacted the parent-child dynamics of households in her neighborhood.

   Jiang Jin -- "Times Have Changed, Men and Women are the Same" -- was the daughter of Shanghai intellectuals, a red guard, a sent down youth, a university student, and now a historian in the US. Inspired by her parents, especially her liberated mother, and using their private library of classics, she aimed to "read 10,000 books, travel 10,000 miles [for true knowledge]", a Chinese expression.

   Lihua Wang -- "Gender Consciousness in My Teen Years" -- discusses her evolving perceptions and consciousness as a female worker (and later college) who ultimately realizes her aspiration of being an educated independent person who contributes to society while finding self-fulfillment.

   Xueping Zhong -- "Between 'Lixiang' and Childhood Dreams: Back from the Future to the Nearly Forgotten Yesteryears" -- from Shanghai, whose parents instilled in her a love of learning early on; her mother pushing her to model herself after great intellectuals in history, like the author of _Dream of the Red Mansion_, Cao Xueqin. She did in fact follow the CR trend of rebellion, studying hard for college while others were not. Throughout, the conflict and harmony between lixiang [ideals] and personal aspirations are discussed thoughtfully.

   Zhang Zhen -- "Production of Senses in and out of the 'Everlasting Auspicious Lane': Shanghai 1966-1976" -- a Cinema Studies scholar at NYU today, discusses her unique neighborhood, her childhood love of films and literature, her amateur performance experiences, and intellectual maturation.

   Yanmei Wei -- "'Congratulations, It's a Girl!' Gender and Identity in Mao's China" -- the only one of these memoirs of someone who grew up mostly in the post-Mao era, which makes for an interesting point of comparison with the others. Expectations of female behavior evolved, but with some continuities too.




2. I picked up this book from my local public library solely on the basis of its title, but I was very pleasantly surprised once I started reading it. This book is a collection of autobiographical essays written by Chinese-American women who are now teaching at universities in the United States. All of the essays examine the authors' experiences growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution from a feminist perspective. The introduction makes it clear that the authors were motivated by a desire to go beyond the standard (at least in the U.S. and Europe) version of the Cultural Revolution as a period of complete chaos, despair, and oppression. Instead, the authors write about the many ways they felt, often including senses of empowerment, freedom, and creativity.
   
   This book is quite straight-forward and does not require anything more than a general knowledge of modern Chinese history and maybe a tiny bit of familiarity with feminist theory (for the introduction).

1 comments about Modern Chinese Artists: A Biographical Dictionary.

1. This is a great start, & should enjoy at least 4 stars, but I can't bring myself to award more than 2 stars because - through no fault of the author - Chinese art has moved on so fast since he wrote this biography, that I find alot of Chinese artists known outside China are simply not included in the book. For researchers & students it's a great snapshot in time; for collectors it is rather disappointing. So the question is when is the next edition going to be ready?!

No comments about Avatars and Antiheroes: A Guide to Contemporary Chinese Artists.

5 comments about Daughter of the River: An Autobiography.

1. Rarely have I been unable to finish a book, even when it's quite terrible. However, this book was unreadable to me.

   There is no rhyme or reason to this book. There's no linear progression. It's more of a "This happened when I was 5. This happened when I was 15. This happened when I was 12. This happened when I was 5." The book goes nowhere and there is no plot to follow.

   After reading the glowing reviews here on Amazon, I was very much looking forward to reading this book. However, after reading half of it, it's in a box in the closet...




2. I just had a hard time reading/understanding/finishing this book. I did finally finish it because I wanted to know the mystery behind the author's father, but in the end the whole book was disappointing. I guess it's a matter of the book's structure. The author jumps from one time setting to another so often, it gets totally confusing! Also she intertwines different stories of different family members and other people in her life, that it's easy to confuse the characters. Some of the language sounds awkward, the curse words seem...forced. Also after a while, the author's unceasing bitterness towards life tended to grate on my nerves.



3. I read this book to see if I could use it in a college class I teach on young women and coming of age. After reading the split reviews on amazon.com, I decided to read the book for myself.
   
   In short: I loved this book! It has a variety of issues that pertain to coming of age including the intersections between and among gender, race, culture, class, family, education, and politics.
   
   The book is categorized as "Autobiography" but it could easily be categorized as "Autobiography/Women's Studies" for the range of women's issues it covers.
   
   I will teach this book in the future. I would just advise my students, or any reader really, to pay attention to the dates as the book jumps around a lot and it helps to have a frame of reference (e.g. Hong Ying was born in 1962 so if she's talking about 1968 she is obviously 6 years old, but usually doesn't mention that fact) in which to view each segment of the story.
   
   Highly recommended. The end of the book made my heart soar.



4. I found this book to be somewhat interesting for its time and place; the slums of Chongqing at the end of the Cultural Revoloution. The authors family situation is also somewhat interesting, but a bit too predictable. I also read one of the author's novels, that I picked up off the sale table in Hong Kong and found it also just okay.



5. Hong Ying's autobiographical novel gives an in depth picture of `normal' life in China after World War II with its `hypocrite socialism' and its terrible famines.
   It is a story of a harsh struggle for survival: unabated hunger, nerve-racking promiscuity, lack of privacy, bitter loneliness, lies and denunciations.
   It is also a tale about growing up in a `strange' family, becoming an adult, discovering sexuality and about the search for one's own roots.
   
   This book shows poignantly the real and direct impact of governmental political and social decisions on people's daily life. It is not less than a `personal' historical sketch with a genuine human touch.
   
   This magisterial novel is bathed in a magical subdued atmosphere. It is written like most `Schubertian' music in a minor key-note.
   A must read, not only for Chinese scholars.