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No other style of storytelling could have exhibited... with more clarity or greater rawness
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is an absorbing book but it doesn't have the same impact as Xinran's earlier The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices.
Xinran travels to China to interview a cross-section of elderly Chinese citizens who have all lived through the tumultuous Mao years since the Japanese invasion in 1937. As she puts it, this generation may not know how to use a computer but does know "civil war, political madness and queuing for food." Her goal is to recognize, celebrate and record their courage.
The interviews are filled with suffering and stoic resilience: people dispatched to Xinjiang to build a new city out of the desert, the old man fighting government bulldozers to preserve the tea culture of a poor city in Anhui province, a perky old medicine seller in Guizhou, a man who has been handcrafting lanterns in Nanjing for sixty years, a poor shoe repairer in Zhengzhou who has scrimped and saved all her life to send her son and daughter to China's best universities.
Sympathetic and sensitive, Xinran asks these people about their experiences, how they lived and loved, how they survived, how they dealt with the storms of politics, how they looked after their children...
It is an absorbing, melancholy book... and a little uneven. Sometimes the execution seems a little flat: the long discussion between Xinran and a journalist about tiger stoves for example. The interview with the gymnast woman or the oil prospecting couple do not always make for very lively reading.
Through the book flows a strong current of nostalgia for the old China that is disappearing. Like many of her interviewees, Xinran has mixed feelings about the West. Western cultural influences are often assimilated to consumerism and the "slurry of Western fastfood". It is as though Xinran is sometimes thinking, "If only the West had never butted its way into China in the nineteenth century, if only, if only..."
This book is a contribution to 20th century Chinese history, a tribute to the indomitable spirit of a generation that suffered enormously, and a lament for a culture that is changing too quickly.
Xinran travels to China to interview a cross-section of elderly Chinese citizens who have all lived through the tumultuous Mao years since the Japanese invasion in 1937. As she puts it, this generation may not know how to use a computer but does know "civil war, political madness and queuing for food." Her goal is to recognize, celebrate and record their courage.
The interviews are filled with suffering and stoic resilience: people dispatched to Xinjiang to build a new city out of the desert, the old man fighting government bulldozers to preserve the tea culture of a poor city in Anhui province, a perky old medicine seller in Guizhou, a man who has been handcrafting lanterns in Nanjing for sixty years, a poor shoe repairer in Zhengzhou who has scrimped and saved all her life to send her son and daughter to China's best universities.
Sympathetic and sensitive, Xinran asks these people about their experiences, how they lived and loved, how they survived, how they dealt with the storms of politics, how they looked after their children...
It is an absorbing, melancholy book... and a little uneven. Sometimes the execution seems a little flat: the long discussion between Xinran and a journalist about tiger stoves for example. The interview with the gymnast woman or the oil prospecting couple do not always make for very lively reading.
Through the book flows a strong current of nostalgia for the old China that is disappearing. Like many of her interviewees, Xinran has mixed feelings about the West. Western cultural influences are often assimilated to consumerism and the "slurry of Western fastfood". It is as though Xinran is sometimes thinking, "If only the West had never butted its way into China in the nineteenth century, if only, if only..."
This book is a contribution to 20th century Chinese history, a tribute to the indomitable spirit of a generation that suffered enormously, and a lament for a culture that is changing too quickly.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is an infuriating book. I haven't read any of Xinran's previous books. While the book 'grew on me', some of it was dire. The author has an infuriating habit of injecting many of her own views and barely relevant experiences into her interviews. The people she interviews are invaraiably interesting, but she directs them along some obscure tracks, and in some of the best parts (that gains the book three stars) where she seems to be about to expose, or explain, or have her subjects explain some important isuses - like why there is the enduring loyalty for MAO, the Party and the Revolution, despite what he, they, it, inflcited upon the people of China, and many of her subjects - she then abruptly changes track - some trivia, or even some love letters, that do nothing to help explain the real questions. She seems to get tantalising close to some really interesting points or revalations then deflects her subjects off to something minor. A facinating glimpse, obscured by (to me) an annoying style and a too ready willingness to give her views, and inject trivia rather than develop the great potential in the views of her subjects
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This would have been a good book but for the author's tiresome insistence of placing herself and her thoughts before the stories of the individuals she interviews. Xinran, we really don't want to know! The interviewees were all preselected by Chinese students before the author deigned to fly across and interview them and only then at a fairly superficial level. She skirts around issues by claiming to be 'respectful' and it all feels slightly artificial. I forced myself to finish the book if only to respect the stories of those who have suffered so much. An absolutely massive lost opportunity to capture real stories of real people of an era rapidly being lost from Chinese collective memory.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
History review of China
To whom it may concern,
China whitness gives a revealing account of China in the wake of the change over and the ruling by Deng Xiaoping leading to the China of... Read more
China whitness gives a revealing account of China in the wake of the change over and the ruling by Deng Xiaoping leading to the China of... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Paul Helder
Getting China's greatest generation to talk
Xinran is a gentle, non-pushy reporter, but her politeness gets the old folks to open up more than they would for their families. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Brian Griffith
The idea is good, but the execution is poor
It was very fascinating to hear the words of ordinary people. Their struggles, their joys, and their views on lives, etc. Read more
Published 18 months ago by EM
superficial
Have just finished this book that I was given but it was hard work. Have just read Charlie's two star review and couldn't agree more. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Rossco
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