No comments about Tong Shao-Yi and His Family.

2 comments about Shanghai: Crucible of Modern China.

1. Betty Wei has provided a balance narrative of how Shanghai emerged from a small and enclosed port to an international city known as the Pearl of the Orient in the 1930s and later came to embraced communism in 1949.

   Full of anedotes of all kinds, Wei engages the reader to imagine the lives of various social and economic class and provide researched historical facts and statistics that other scholars in the field may find useful.

   A must read for anyone who is interested in the history of Old Shanghai but short of time.




2. When I lived in Hong Kong in the 90's I loved reading books like these. This one should be great; the problem is not the subject matter, but simply the flat, dull prose and tortured arguments. Aside from a small section of nice black and white photos I can't say anything good about it. Readers interested in this fascinating city may wish to try Harriet Sergeant's Shanghai, which at least is far better written (I'm not sure the other reviewer here read Wei's book or Sergeant's - it is the latter that is full of "wonderful anecdotes," I think - this one is a mediocre academic text). Another good book is W.H. Auden & Christopher Isherwood's A Journey to a War, which deals with a 1930's journey the two British poets made to China and includes a fascinating section on Shanghai, as well as Canton and Hong Kong, and includes Auden's poem "Hong Kong," which should be the anthem of that city.

1 comments about The Otherness of Self: A Genealogy of Self in Contemporary China.

1. This is an ambitious book that pushes the paradigm of anthropology beyond its more traditional study of a people's way of interpreting the world. Liu connects the epistemological project of culture to questions of ontology, and in so doing, explodes the possiblities of ethnology. He also neatly synthesizes a great deal of contemporary philosophical and anthropological thought in the process. For thinking readers.

No comments about Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950.

5 comments about The Tarasov Saga: From Russia Through China to Australia.

1. This is an unusually fine first book. A riveting story about a courageous, strong-willed woman and her family in their sojourn half a world across. Fascinating characters in all walks of life. Interesting historical details that I have not come across elsewhere.
   Memorable personal episodes abound.
   My favorite humorous one occurred in 1941. As a budding young pianist, Gary was given the key to his aunt's sumptuous apartment so he could practice on the concert grand - with the top up, of course. One afternoon, he let himself in and found his aunt and uncle asleep in the bedroom. Being considerate, he delayed the start of his practice until they awoke. He parked himself in an armchair in the corner of the bedroom. Suddenly, his aunt got up to go to the bathroom. She was stark naked. Gary was speechless - looking at his first naked woman ever in his young nine years of life. His aunt sensed his presence, turned, saw him and started to scream, yelling at him to get out. His uncle woke up and jumped out of bed. He also was naked. He also started to scream. Bedlam! as Nash writes.
   You've just got to read this book for its humor, sadness and strength of character exhibited, culminating in a happy ending.



2. I was involved in a novel when I purchased a copy ot the Tarasov Saga. I intended to keep it in reserve for when I finished the novel.
   Out of curiosity I started reading the Tarasov Saga. Once I started the novel had to wait. I became involved with the story of a struggling mother and at the same time gathered a good understanding of what Russia must have been like at that time.
   The stort of foreign groups living in designated areas in China was also fascinating. The numerous photographs in the booked also helped me. I often found myself referring back to the photographs and maps to help my understanding. A good read



3. I found the book most interesting especially because of the historical insights that the author shared about life in Russia, China and finally in Australia. The contrasts between life in the Far East and life now in Australia for Gary and his family is amazing and it is wonderful to note the appreciation he has for the differences.
   I always love stories about people and what they have coped with in their lives. Certainly Gary Nash will have inherited some of the strong and stoic qualities that his grandmother showed.
   I found the book very enjoyable to read and the family tree was very useful to continuously revert back to as the story progressed. It has also been written in a very positive way and I would guess that this is why the Tarasov family managed to get to Australia and be successful.
   Most enjoyable - well worth reading!



4. The Tarasov Saga is a very absorbing book, not only because of its account of a remarkable journey over 25 years of the extended Tarasov family, initially fleeing from Russia through China and the Phillipines to Australia, but also for the historical perspective of life in Russia and China in the first half of the 20th century.
   I have known the author, both as a work colleague and a friend for over 30 years but, Gary being a very private person, all I knew of his background was that he was of White Russian origin and had lived in China before coming to Australia! The to read this book and discover the astonishing story of all that happened from the time of the Russian Revolution and its effects on the Tarasovs, individually and collectively, until the first of them arrived in Australia in 1949, made for compelling reading.I am not qualified to comment on Gary's literary style or technique, but the way he has portrayed each member of the family, their strengths and their weaknesses brought them to life so that, not only were they believable, but one could visualise their individual contributions to this saga.
   This book is about courage, determination and resilience, and what can be achieved by people who are single-minded and motivated to seek a better life after many years of deprivation
   and hardship.
   In particular, the reader is left in no doubt of the author's great affection and admiration for his Grandmother Aida and her monumental efforts to ensure that the family survived their epic journey and, bar one member, all be reunited in Australia.
   I thoroughly commend this book which is not only an enjoyable read but in an age where the refugee problem is a world-wide one, provides an understanding of the hardships and traumas that constantly confront refugees on the move.
   It is an intensely human story which reinforces basic values and beliefs, in an era where many consider these things to be unimportant.
   It would be nice to think that an enterprising producer might think that there is enough meat and drama in The Tarasov Saga to provide the basis for a film or TV series. It certainly has all the ingredients.



5. This book details the adventures of a large family as they seek safe haven from communism. In the beginning of the book, the author's mother and father are living in Czarist Russia, where his father is an officer in the army just prior to the outbreak of World War I. The small family grows to five children during the war. As the revolution begins to take hold, the father joins the loyalist White Russians and is dragged further and further east with them. His mother is left to manage alone with the five children. As it became clear that, as White Russians, they were not welcome in the Soviet Union, the mother decides to make her way east with the children, although she had no money and only a vague idea of where her husband might be. After a series of misadventures in which she is forced to leave the children behind, she eventually finds her husband and gets all five children back with her in a city in China that had a large Russian refugee population. The entire family made its home in China for the next twenty years, until a second communist revolution made them refugees once again.

   The story is quite well written, with amazing recall of details from long ago adventures. The stories describing everyday life in the Russian refugee communities of pre-Communist China provide a fascinating glimpse into a very little known way of life. On the one hand, it is amazing that the entire large family was able to make it out of Russia and then out of China, but on the other hand, it was precisely because they had so many people working together in the family that made it possible.

No comments about Practicing Kinship: Lineage and Descent in Late Imperial China.

1 comments about Best Chinese Names.

1. I bought this book to try to find a Chinese name for my baby. My husband is Chinese and speaks Cantonese, but this book is Mandarin Chinese so he couldn't read much of it. Don't buy this unless you can read (and speak) Mandarin Chinese or it will be much too difficult to understand.

5 comments about The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family.

1. Excellent book for history buffs or Viet Nam veterans or anyone who knows someone who was in Viet Nam. This book explains a lot about the culture and people of Viet Nam. I highly recommend it.



2. Mai's book is an excellent way for American readers to understand the Vietnam war as well as Vietnamese culture, especially how they have reacted to French colonization, the American war period and the difficult choices that had to made about who to side with. It's a unique and important book that's gripping and important.



3. I bought this book prior to a vacation in Vietnam. This is painless history! Although the book is long (nearly 500 pages) and very heavy to carry on an airplane, it was worth it. I learned so much about the historical differences that led to the Vietnam war and the succeeding political situations. I feel really prepared now for this trip in terms of understanding the context for my travels both to Hanoi and to Saigon.
   If you want to get an understanding of the history of this country from prior to the French occupancy to the Communist era, I would recommend this book.



4. I highly recommend this book for all young 2nd generation Vietnamese-Americans, like myself, who want to learn about their family's culture and past. This book should be included in any Asian American Studies class or curriculum.
   Well done, Mrs. Duong-Elliot! Thank you for writing such an insightful, moving and educational story about your family and Vietnam. Not only did I learn more about the Vietnamese people, but I learn more about who I am.



5. The Sacred Willow is a book about Vietnam and it's history portrayed by the life of one Vietnamese family. Unlike most books about the war in Vietnam, this book offers the views of the Vietnamese themselves instead of the views of foreigners. Another important aspect is the fact that Elliot shows the opinons and values of both the people who support and are against the Viet Minh. This is done by the views of her family and the views of her sister Thang, who leaves to fight for the Viet Minh. While studying abroad Elliot is able to get an outside perspective and begins to feel a connection to the Viet Minh, at least to the point that she understands why they are willing to fight.
   
   I did enjoy this book becuase it directly tied into my history class, but if it was not for that I do not know if I would of truely enjoyed it. The book is fascinating, since it gives American readers the views of the Vietnamese that we were fighting for in the Vietnam War. Another plus, is the reader does not have to be familiar with Vietnamese history beacuse Elliot does an excellent job describing the historical events. However, the book is a little dry, a very long read, and a little bias toward the Viet Minh (Elliot did grow up in a family that strongly despised the communists). I would probably only recomened it for modern history lovers, those who have an appreciation for Vietnam or the Vietnamese War. The book is definitely not for leisure readers.

1 comments about Blue and White Transfer-Printed Pottery (Shire Library).

1. I was dissapointed in this book. I bought it hoping for a good guide to identifying tranferware patterns. It has a lot of history, a large section on how the transfers and copper plates were created - this took up about 1/2 the book. The second half of the book had some more history about the different manufacturers, and some history about how the patterns and tastes changed over the years. There were actually very few examples of the different patterns - maybe about 40 different designs were listed, which is not a lot considering how many hundreds of different designs were produced during that time. No prices or values.
   
   This book is good for the history and background. But not for identification.

5 comments about Soong Dynasty.

1. I am too young to remember the hegira of the Kuomintang, but I've heard the story in one form or another all my life. I've met people on both sides who have vastly different views of the events and personalities of the time. One thing that is clear, though, and that is that Stillwell hated Chiang, which is expained in lucid detail in Tuchman's Stillwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45. Seagrave takes the same view, namely that Chiang was a gangster who got to the top at a time when China was in chaos.
   
   Chiang's hagiography, as touted by the Mandarins in Taiwan is an example of the amazing curative powers of propaganda. (That is why you should turn off CNN if you want to be able to think.)
   
   This book is not just about Chiang, but about the Soong's, the family he married into. The story of Madame Chiang growing up as a young girl in Georgia, and learning to speak English with a southern accent is fascinating. The Soongs were bicultural and bilingual. They were also fantastically wealthy, and that combination helped them find their way to the top in the USA. Mrs. Chiang had unprecedented access to FDR during the time that the US was helping the Chinese fight Japan. The Chiangs used that access to extort huge sums of money from the Americans and they used it to enrich themselves while letting Mao and Cho carry the war.
   
   Madame Chiang's sister was married to Dr. Sun Yat Sen, about whom Seagrave has little good to say, but who has been considered the father of the republican revolution in China. Whether he was or not is a question that Seagrave discusses at length in the book.
   
   Another great book about Chinese history from a man who has spent much of his life in Asia. A great read.



2. A very intriguing look at the power behind the power in China before the Communist takeover. Justice was definitely denied for the Chinese people whose national bank reserves were looted by this family. What is more enraging to learn from this book is the blatant robbery of U.S. foreign aid cash by this Soong family and the Chiang Kaishek regime, which was the most corrupt government in the world. I guessed Harry Truman said it in the most poignant way: "..the Soong is nothing but a bunch of thieves.." And I agree with him. It is is sad that all the loots were never returned to the people of China. The Soong represented the worst of the Chinese in that era which were greed, power hunger, blind ambitions, criminal behaviors and worst of all China was run by the de facto criminal organization behind generalissimo Chiang Kaishek.



3. This book tells the story of Charlie Soong' children, each of whom connected with a part of China's transition into the modern world at the beginning of the 20th century. Wonderfully told.



4. Seagrave's view of pre-World War II Chinese history consists of equal parts of conspiracy and corruption. These elements are certainly present in Chinese history, but Seagrave's presentation is so biased, confused, and poorly documented that no one should accept his account without careful research.
   
   For conspiracy, the most notable claims are that the Kuang-hsu emperor was poisoned (116), that the Dowager Empress Tz'u-hsi was poisoned (116), that Yuan Shikai was poisoned (text on 162 says uremia, footnote on 480 says "Such medical diagnoses were suspicious at best. Was it ever possible, organically, for a Borgia to die a natural death?"), that Charlie Soong was poisoned (142-3): "The facts surrounding Charlie Soong's death are obscure... the possibility of foul play has always existed... Euphemistically, stomach cancer was as common in revolutionary Shanghai as lead poisoning was in Chicago and Marseille." Seagrave goes on like this for almost a page in an exceptionally tendentious passage. There is of course zero documentation for all of these claims.
   
   In a way though, these claims are almost trivial. It makes no difference to Seagrave's narrative whether these people were poisoned or not. A much more essential point is the central role that Seagrave claims the Green Gang played. Unfortunately, Seagrave's account of the Green Gang has many problems. Brian G. Martin, whose book "The Shanghai Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime" is probably the best account of the Green Gang in English, says that Seagrave's account, "with its conspiratorial view of Chinese history in the 1920s and 1930s and of Jiang Jieshi's rise to power, sacrifices historical fact for sensationalist effect." (2)
   
   This is not an overstatement. One of the strangest things in "The Soong Dynasty" is how Seagrave identifies the well-known Green Gang boss Chang Hsiao-lin as a member not of the Green Gang, but of the "Blue Gang". The Chinese name of the "Green Gang" was "qing bang," with the word qing referring indifferently to both green and blue. Thus many early accounts of the Gang refer to them as the "Blue Gang." The Comintern representative Sneevliet regularly calls them this in his reports. The "Blue Gang" is the "Green Gang" and the "Green Gang" is the "Blue Gang." How Seagrave confused one gang into two I have no idea.
   
   Rather than rendering his account more difficult, however, this seems to open a door for Seagrave. Huang Chin-jung, Tu Yueh-sheng, and Chang Hsiao-lin were the Shanghai gangster troika, mentioned in numerous books. What Seagrave does is largely replace Chang Hsiao-lin, the Green Gang boss, with Chang Ching-chiang, one of the "four elder statesmen" of the Kuomintang, and a close advisor to Chiang Kai-shek. Thus Huang, Tu, and Chang Ching-chiang appear in various combinations throughout the book. Chang is an intimate of Tu (161), a business partner of Tu (163-4), a kidnapper like Tu and Huang (212), and so on. This is how Seagrave grafts Tu and the Green Gang onto Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT. Was Chang Ching-chiang really an important member of the Green Gang? He is mentioned in Brian Martin's book only once, as someone Tu and Huang were appealing to to continue the Shanghai purge in 1927. This is in contrast to Chang Hsiao-lin (Zhang Xiaolin), who occupies large chunks of Martin's book.
   
   Putting aside the conspiratorial events, the historical events Seagrave attempts to recount are so confused and contradictory that C. Martin Wilbur calls "The Soong Dynasty" "a travesty of a book from a historical viewpoint." (Wilbur's "China in My Life", p. 285). This is very bad for people who read "The Soong Dynasty" for history, rather than scandal or speculation.
   
   Anachronistic (or at least highly confusing) statements are a major part of this problem. A striking example is Seagrave's account of the Western Hills meeting (November 1925). He first quotes Isaacs' description of the goal of the meeting as being to "Ally with Chiang to overthrow Wang (Ching-wei)." Why overthrow Wang? According to Seagrave, Wang was "too weak to prevent a Communist coup. He had just convened a Second Party Congress that placed most of the critical departments of the southern government in the hands of the CCP and other leftists" (210). It seems to me a reasonable interpretation of this is that Seagrave thinks that first Wang convened the second party congress and then the Western Hills reactionaries decided to dump him. But the Second Party Congress was held in January 1926, after the Western Hills meeting. Why overthrow Wang? Try Wilbur's book "The Nationalist Revolution in China" (30-32). Wilbur gives a clear discussion of the factionalism facing the KMT at this point. Anachronisms aside, Seagrave is lost, complaining in his footnotes that these are "murky developments." (484)
   
   An even more startling discussion is Seagrave's account of the "First Shanghai Uprising" (217). Apparently Seagrave got this from Harold Isaacs' "Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution", but compare Seagrave with Isaacs (p. 131 of the 1961 edition), or even better, with "Missionaries of Revolution" by Wilbur and How (p. 328-329). Seagrave's account is simply wrong, adding in the Green Gang with no sources, misidentifying people, misunderstanding the circumstances, claiming "large numbers" of casualties and a blow to the Communists, where Wilbur and How list documents that give the casualties as 10 people killed, and Isaacs, the champion of the labor groups involved, dismisses the event with the remark "The incident passed almost unnoticed on the fringe of events."
   
   "The Soong Dynasty" does provide some interesting information in the earlier part of the book on Charlie Soong, father of the six Soong children. In particular, Charlie's success as a businessman and his work on behalf of Sun Yat-sen has been neglected, and there is still no extended account of these available today. Unfortunately, most of Seagrave's materials on these aspects is also poorly documented. Thus Seagrave claims that Soong joined the Hung-men Society ("the Red Gang") "shortly before the 1888 Chinese New Year celebration" (57), but gives no source for this. All of his comments about Charlie's activities and the Red Gang: that he was introduced by his brothers-in-law (58), that he printed the Gang's secret papers (57), that Gang members provided capital for his business ventures (60), that he bought the building for his printing shop through the Gang (61), that the steamship Charlie and his family fled to Japan on in 1912 was owned by the Gang (130), are all unsourced.
   
   It is a pity that Seagrave's book turns out to be so unreliable; it would be nice if there were one book that covered the people and events of this period, but I don't think there is one single work that does this. Wilbur's books are solid historical accounts, and Brian Martin's book has excellent documentation, though the Green Gang, like the Mafia, is murky water. As for the history of the Soongs, despite Seagrave's massive onslaught, the field remains barren.



5. Really, this is the worst sort of hatchet job by a man obsessed with Chiang Kai-shek and the evil he is thought to have done. Seagrave has written some truly awful stuff, generally based on one twisted bit of history, and generally made toxic by his loathing for CKS, the Soong family, Claire Chennault, and indeed anyone and anything associated with Nationalist China.
   
   For a more recent, scholarly, and honest portrayal of CKS and those who surrounded him, see the excellent The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China (Belknap Press), a recent biography by Jay Taylor, published by a division of Harvard University Press.
   
   As for this book, I give it two stars instead of the one it probably deserves, because as other reviewers have pointed out, it is an entertaining read. The same of course can be said by anything from Nora Roberts.