Angela's Reviews > Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road

An interesting overview of a very particular set of people on a very small street in a very, very large city in a huge country. I enjoyed some of the stories of the lives of these cooks, vagrants, activists, retirees, flower resellers, sandwich shop operators and accordion marketers, investing in insane dreams and forcing their children to get married, all while living in one-room hovels. Their lives seemed, at the end, similar to ours, despite their wretched histories of forced "re-education" camps (i.e. slave labor), famine, eviction, death, and disillusionment.

This re-reminded me how evil Mao is, and how his image and history too often gets whitewashed in America. I was also frequently irritated by the author's ham-handed attempts to insert his own opinion on matters, and by the entire mission of generalizing on the character of a nation by using a tiny subset of people. I kept flashing into how a Chinese person might describe all of America by focusing on a bunch of store owners on Figueroa St...it just wouldn't be possible.

However, I did get a good general feel of the "Chinese character." I think. I guess. Confucianism, tradition, food, family, TV, and MONEY MONEY MONEY. Also frequent bouts of meaninglessness, alienation, and persistent thoughts of suicide. Sounds like America to me.