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Jan Wong, a Canadian of Chinese descent, went to China as a starry-eyed Maoist in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution. A true believer -- and one of only two Westerners permitted to enroll at Beijing University -- her education included wielding a pneumatic drill at the Number One Machine Tool Factory. In the name of the Revolution, she renounced rock and roll, hauled pig manure in the paddy fields, and turned in a fellow student who sought her help in getting to the United States. She also met and married the only American draft dodger from the Vietnam War to seek asylum in China. Red China Blues begins as Wong's startling -- and ironic -- memoir of her rocky six-year romance with Maoism that began to sour as she became aware of the harsh realities of Chinese communism and led to her eventual repatriation to the West. Returning to China in the late eighties as a journalist, she covered both the brutal Tiananmen Square crackdown and the tumultuous era of capitalist reforms under Deng Xiaoping. In a wry, absorbing, and often surreal narrative, she relates the horrors that led to her disillusionment with the "worker's paradise." And through the stories of the people -- an unhappy young woman who was sold into marriage, China's most famous dissident, a doctor who lengthens penises -- Wong creates an extraordinary portrait of the world's most populous nation. In setting out to show readers in the Western world what life is like in China, and why we should care, Wong reacquaints herself with the old friends -- and enemies -- of her radical past, and comes to terms with the legacies of her ancestral homeland.… (mere)
Jan Wong writes interesting and undoubtfully quite accurate about the situation in China during the Mao period. Nevertheless, she somehow still is a bit naive in her writing and because the book is non-fictional the storyline is not always really clear (sometimes it is just pages of summaries of what's wrong in China and this makes the book lose its pace).
Overall a very interesting piece of writing but not ground-breaking. ( )
Excellent introduction to the cultural revolution and ideology of Mao Zedong as explained through the eyes of a young Canadian college student who happened to be of Chinese descent. The retelling of the events leading up to and during the Tiananmen Square massacre are especially gripping. ( )
Kept my interest for quite a while. However, the brutality depicted in the last few chapters made me skip quite a few pages to the end. I had never thought much about China and the Revolution before, but the detail in this helps me understand the China in current politics. ( )
a little boring at times but an informative picture of china. i am also reading han suyin's autobiography. i think she was a communist so it will be interesting to learn her views. ( )
China through the eyes of the first western student allowed in as an exchange students. Wong is caught up in the fervor of revolutionary China but comes to learn that where there is idolatry there is disappointment. ( )
Jan Wong, a Canadian of Chinese descent, went to China as a starry-eyed Maoist in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution. A true believer -- and one of only two Westerners permitted to enroll at Beijing University -- her education included wielding a pneumatic drill at the Number One Machine Tool Factory. In the name of the Revolution, she renounced rock and roll, hauled pig manure in the paddy fields, and turned in a fellow student who sought her help in getting to the United States. She also met and married the only American draft dodger from the Vietnam War to seek asylum in China. Red China Blues begins as Wong's startling -- and ironic -- memoir of her rocky six-year romance with Maoism that began to sour as she became aware of the harsh realities of Chinese communism and led to her eventual repatriation to the West. Returning to China in the late eighties as a journalist, she covered both the brutal Tiananmen Square crackdown and the tumultuous era of capitalist reforms under Deng Xiaoping. In a wry, absorbing, and often surreal narrative, she relates the horrors that led to her disillusionment with the "worker's paradise." And through the stories of the people -- an unhappy young woman who was sold into marriage, China's most famous dissident, a doctor who lengthens penises -- Wong creates an extraordinary portrait of the world's most populous nation. In setting out to show readers in the Western world what life is like in China, and why we should care, Wong reacquaints herself with the old friends -- and enemies -- of her radical past, and comes to terms with the legacies of her ancestral homeland.
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Overall a very interesting piece of writing but not ground-breaking. ( )