Xujun Eberlein's Blog
December 6, 2017
Aren’t We All Accomplices?
In May 2012, a stranger contacted me through my website. A professor of cultural psychology at Hampshire College, Q.M. Zhang was interested in talking about Chongqing, the city I grew up in. What triggered her request for a meeting, apparently, was my article titled “Another Kind of American History in Chongqing,” which had appeared on the Atlantic website the previous year. She was writing a memoir about her relationship with her father, who had worked for the Kuomintang (aka the KMT or the Nationalists, the ruling party of China from 1928 to 1949) in Chongqing during WWII.
By contrast, my own parents were underground Communists in the 1940s. So her father and mine, though unknown to each other, had literally been enemies in the same city. (Continue reading here )
By contrast, my own parents were underground Communists in the 1940s. So her father and mine, though unknown to each other, had literally been enemies in the same city. (Continue reading here )
June 22, 2012
The Rules of the Game -- A Review of China's Officialdom Novels
(Published in
Foreign Policy
)
If Second in Command illustrates the explosive success of the officialdom novel, it also exemplifies the genre's precarious status in China. Truth, it turns out, has started imitating fiction in ways that have made the Chinese government most uncomfortable.
>>Read the complete piece here
If Second in Command illustrates the explosive success of the officialdom novel, it also exemplifies the genre's precarious status in China. Truth, it turns out, has started imitating fiction in ways that have made the Chinese government most uncomfortable.
>>Read the complete piece here
May 31, 2012
A Dual Review of "Tombstone" and "Mao's Great Famine"
(published in
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS
)
THE TEACHER OF THE FUTURE
XUJUN EBERLEIN
on two accounts of the great Chinese famine.
In July 2011, Frank Dikötter’s Mao's Great Famine: The History Of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958 62 won the BBC’s Samuel Johnson Prize, one of Europe’s best known and most lucrative awards for a work of nonfiction. One of the judges, Brenda Maddox, explained to the Guardian why the book impressed her so much: “Why didn’t I know about this? We feel we know who the villains of the 20th century are — Stalin and Hitler. But here, fully 50 years after the event, is something we did not know about.”
That reaction highlights both the main contribution and main limitation of Dikötter’s book. Though there have been many books and articles published on the same subject — in English, Chinese, and I’m sure other languages — apparently Dikötter’s is the one that brought awareness to at least one more Westerner ignorant of the catastrophe. On the other hand, Dikötter’s attempt to draw parallels between the Mao-era famine that swept over the entirety of mainland China from 1959 to 1961 and killed tens of millions, the Holocaust, and the Soviet Gulag is, at best, an over-simplification that hinders understanding. To borrow what the discerning Asia scholar Ian Buruma once said on a different subject: “To distinguish between atrocities does not diminish the horror, but without clarity on these matters history recedes into myth and becomes a form of propaganda.”
The most authoritative study on the famine is Yang Jisheng’s Tombstone, which has a broader and deeper perspective. The Chinese language edition of the book was published in Hong Kong two years before Dikötter’s, and an English version is due out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux in fall 2012.
>>Read the complete review at LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS )
THE TEACHER OF THE FUTURE
XUJUN EBERLEIN
on two accounts of the great Chinese famine.
In July 2011, Frank Dikötter’s Mao's Great Famine: The History Of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958 62 won the BBC’s Samuel Johnson Prize, one of Europe’s best known and most lucrative awards for a work of nonfiction. One of the judges, Brenda Maddox, explained to the Guardian why the book impressed her so much: “Why didn’t I know about this? We feel we know who the villains of the 20th century are — Stalin and Hitler. But here, fully 50 years after the event, is something we did not know about.”
That reaction highlights both the main contribution and main limitation of Dikötter’s book. Though there have been many books and articles published on the same subject — in English, Chinese, and I’m sure other languages — apparently Dikötter’s is the one that brought awareness to at least one more Westerner ignorant of the catastrophe. On the other hand, Dikötter’s attempt to draw parallels between the Mao-era famine that swept over the entirety of mainland China from 1959 to 1961 and killed tens of millions, the Holocaust, and the Soviet Gulag is, at best, an over-simplification that hinders understanding. To borrow what the discerning Asia scholar Ian Buruma once said on a different subject: “To distinguish between atrocities does not diminish the horror, but without clarity on these matters history recedes into myth and becomes a form of propaganda.”
The most authoritative study on the famine is Yang Jisheng’s Tombstone, which has a broader and deeper perspective. The Chinese language edition of the book was published in Hong Kong two years before Dikötter’s, and an English version is due out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux in fall 2012.
>>Read the complete review at LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS )
My Review of "The Fat Years" by Chan Koonchung
(Note: This review of The Fat Years, first appeared in Foreign Policy before the novel's English edition was out, was based on its Chinese edition and the title was translated differently.
You can also read a brief review here.)
China 2013
A controversial novel marks the return of politically charged science fiction in China -- and evokes a decidedly mixed vision of the country's future.
BY XUJUN EBERLEIN | JULY 30, 2010
>>read the complete review in Foreign Policy
You can also read a brief review here.)
China 2013
A controversial novel marks the return of politically charged science fiction in China -- and evokes a decidedly mixed vision of the country's future.
BY XUJUN EBERLEIN | JULY 30, 2010
>>read the complete review in Foreign Policy
