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cyphomandraRed China Blues: my long march from Mao to now
Jan Wong's China: reports from a not-so-foreign correspondent
Beijing Confidential: lost and found in the forbidden city
I read these out of order – starting with Beijing Confidential, which is technically last – and, although I don’t think it makes a huge difference, it’s probably best to start with Red China Blues. Jan Wong is a third generation Chinese Canadian journalist, who in 1972 arrived in China on a student visa to search for her roots and explore her commitment to Maoism. She is offered the chance to stay on and study at Beijing University, which she takes, and flings herself with enthusiasm into student life, political meetings, manual labour and all. After her university graduation the book skips through events – moving between China and Canada, her marriage to a white American living in China in order to dodge the draft – and then slows down again with her coverage of the Tianamen Massacre, much of which she watches from the Beijing Hotel at the north end of the square.
By the time she reaches the massacre her devotion to Maoism is largely gone, and this is the story that drives the book, even while it’s a tight, sharp and often amusing (if bitter) look at a fascinating time period of history, with a lot of intriguing detail about her experiences, and construction of her identity as Canadian and Chinese. Beijing Confidential is a thematic sequel to this, being her trip back (with her family) to Beijing as it prepares for the 2008 Olympics, a trip prompted by her desire to find – and apologise – to a fellow student who she informed on in 1973, for asking about help leaving China. Jan Wong’s China is more of a conventional journalism sort of book, with a broader sweep in topics (and geography) but a tighter focus in terms of time, and although her previous experiences inform it, they don’t dominate. There is some repetition in reading all three, and I think the first is definitely the strongest (and the coverage of Tianamen Square is heart-breaking, with a determination to keep reporting because there’s nothing else she can do), but they’re all worth reading.
I checked to see what she’d done since and was disappointed, because it doesn’t sound anywhere near as interesting and also sounds a bit too deliberately confrontational (lunching with celebrities and bitching about them) for my tastes. On the one hand, I’m glad she hasn’t kept going back over the same material and milking it dry; on the other, I really want to find more good non-fiction about things I didn’t previously know about.
Jan Wong's China: reports from a not-so-foreign correspondent
Beijing Confidential: lost and found in the forbidden city
I read these out of order – starting with Beijing Confidential, which is technically last – and, although I don’t think it makes a huge difference, it’s probably best to start with Red China Blues. Jan Wong is a third generation Chinese Canadian journalist, who in 1972 arrived in China on a student visa to search for her roots and explore her commitment to Maoism. She is offered the chance to stay on and study at Beijing University, which she takes, and flings herself with enthusiasm into student life, political meetings, manual labour and all. After her university graduation the book skips through events – moving between China and Canada, her marriage to a white American living in China in order to dodge the draft – and then slows down again with her coverage of the Tianamen Massacre, much of which she watches from the Beijing Hotel at the north end of the square.
By the time she reaches the massacre her devotion to Maoism is largely gone, and this is the story that drives the book, even while it’s a tight, sharp and often amusing (if bitter) look at a fascinating time period of history, with a lot of intriguing detail about her experiences, and construction of her identity as Canadian and Chinese. Beijing Confidential is a thematic sequel to this, being her trip back (with her family) to Beijing as it prepares for the 2008 Olympics, a trip prompted by her desire to find – and apologise – to a fellow student who she informed on in 1973, for asking about help leaving China. Jan Wong’s China is more of a conventional journalism sort of book, with a broader sweep in topics (and geography) but a tighter focus in terms of time, and although her previous experiences inform it, they don’t dominate. There is some repetition in reading all three, and I think the first is definitely the strongest (and the coverage of Tianamen Square is heart-breaking, with a determination to keep reporting because there’s nothing else she can do), but they’re all worth reading.
I checked to see what she’d done since and was disappointed, because it doesn’t sound anywhere near as interesting and also sounds a bit too deliberately confrontational (lunching with celebrities and bitching about them) for my tastes. On the one hand, I’m glad she hasn’t kept going back over the same material and milking it dry; on the other, I really want to find more good non-fiction about things I didn’t previously know about.
