Frank Dikötter's Snapshots of Popular Misery in the Era of Mao.
Towards the end of last year, under the awkwardly contrived notion of sending Christmas presents to the self, I purchased a number of books on Chinese history for my Kindle. I'd just finished reading Peter Hessler's River Town, a personal account of his time in Fuling and a book that I really should have read the best part of a decade ago when it was first recommended to me. This brief, albeit enjoyable departure from my usual reading habits spurned me on to seek out more material of a similarly non-fictional bent.
Both obstinacy (I refused to read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as a kid purely because someone said I'd like it) and a toxic undercurrent of mistrust bordering on contempt which tends to run among expatriates in China and manifests itself towards any of our peers who dare to profess sufficient knowledge of the country to produce any genuinely creative work based on it, may well have been factors in any subconscious decision I made to avoid reading River Town. Then again, I am a painfully slow reader and I do consciously make an effort to keep my prejudices in check as I've gotten older. There are certainly plenty of other books of various persuasions that have been sitting patiently on my reading list for years unread, so who knows.
Regardless of the reasons why it happened, reading River Town so late into my stay certainly allowed me to appreciate the book in ways that would have been impossible had I read it earlier. Many of Peter Hessler's experiences revived memories of my own time here, both poignant and humorous. I found the book to be thoroughly enjoyable; it's well written, personal, interesting, insightful, accessible, and balanced: neither corrupted by personal bitterness and cynicism, nor pandering to the narrative of mythical utopia pedaled by those with vested interests in staying on the right side of domestic nationalist sentiment.
Anyway, side-track over. River Town's non-fictional examination of a rural Chinese city emerging from the trammels and tragedies of the Maoist era into a new age of development and uncertainty revived my interest in the specifics of 20th century Chinese history, touching as it did on the Third Front, communist mythology, and the large-scale economic development which followed on from Reform and Opening Up in the new age of Deng Xiaoping.
Other than working my way through John Keay's China: A History a couple of years back, I really hadn't read anything substantial on the subject of Chinese history, sketching out a vague outline of recent events almost exclusively through conversations and references in contemporary novels. I have no great interest in ancient history when it comes to China, as so much of it seems to be court politics and many events appear virtually impossible to disentangle from myth and semi-legend (I may be hugely wide of the mark here, this is merely the impression that I get). The events of the 19th and 20th centuries, however, seem to have had a much clearer impact on contemporary society and current events both here and abroad.
I started off with four books covering the period 1937-1976, beginning with Rana Mitter's China's War with Japan, 1937-1945. The Second Sino-Japanese War (or the War of Resistance Against Japan, as it's known here) is an oft overlooked theatre of World War II in the West, significant both in terms of the overall allied victory, tying down the bulk of the Japanese army and putting immense strain on the empire's wartime economy, as well as recent Chinese history, crippling China's own economy, halting the much needed social and economic development which underpinned the nationalist government's claim to legitimacy and weakening their military capabilities. Crucially, the war also allowed the communists to recover and regrow from a position of near obliteration to one of strength deep in the Chinese hinterland, at a time when Japanese attention was focused on the nationalists and their capital of Chongqing.
Of the four books, it is this one that I feel was the best, both in terms of writing and clarity, but also the comprehensiveness with which events were covered. It also happens to cover the period of history which is most easily relatable to Western readers, and so this is the book I would recommend most to anyone wanting to learn more about modern Chinese history in general, or those interested in world events who are just looking for an interesting read.
China's War with Japan, as the name suggests, covers the war from its beginning with the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the culmination of years of tension and Japanese encroachment on Chinese territory and sovereignty, when Chinese and Japanese troops exchanged fire at Wanping, near Beijing, all the way to the Japanese surrender in 1945. The book also covers the prelude to war, from the rise of Japan on the world stage following the Meiji Restoration, through the First Sino-Japanese War over control of the Korean Peninsula and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, to the Allied Powers' betrayal of Chinese support in World War I at the Treaty of Versailles, and eventually the 1931 Mukden Incident that led to the Japanese annexation of Manchuria and its aftermath.
The next three books, those that comprise Frank Dikötter's People's Trilogy, were The Tragedy of Liberation (1945-1957), Mao's Great Famine (1958-1962), and The Cultural Revolution (1962-1976). The first of these books covers the communist victory over the nationalists in the civil war which resumed following the conclusion of the Second World War, as well as the initial period of communist rule, dealing with land reform, the Socialist High Tide, the Hundred Flowers Movement, and the resulting crackdown of the Anti-Rightist Campaign.
The second and third books deal primarily with the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution respectively, encompassing the purges and famine that led to the premature deaths of tens of millions of people in the late fifties and early sixties, as well the political and social chaos that resulted from Mao's mercurial, paranoid leadership and his near constant purging of political rivals and self-appointed successors.
Mao's death in 1976 marked the end of the Cultural Revolution and with it the historical period covered by the final book. As a result, the People's Trilogy can be viewed as a guide to Mao's turbulent reign over mainland China from start to finish, with a focus not so much on political wranglings at the top, as on the effects of each major campaign and policy decision on those lower down the food chain, be they peasants, workers, or low-level cadres.
The trilogy is based largely on archival evidence from within China itself, including government reports and letters to the authorities from regular people, as well as interviews with numerous survivors and participants. Many personal anecdotes are woven into the narrative, fleshing out contemporary events, as attested to in other sources, and complementing the statistics, dates, figures and decisions that resulted in and describe the larger course of history. These personal vignettes allow the books to recount events through the eyes of those caught up in them and, in some cases, allow the reader to experience the changing viewpoints of individuals as they are shaped by historical vicissitudes both great and small.
One thing that did strike me about the trilogy is that it feels as though the real focus was always intended to be on Mao's Great Famine, the central book in terms of chronology but the first to be published. This is the book that seems to have been publicised the most and which garnered the most attention, and while the other two books in the trilogy are by no means insubstantial, they nevertheless struggle to dispel the feeling that they serve as appendages to the writer's other, core interest. At least to me, Mao's Great Famine felt somehow more detailed, more complete, and more compelling than either The Tragedy of Liberation, or The Cultural Revolution.
I wouldn't necessarily recommend the People's Trilogy to anyone with only a passing interest in either China or history, as I would with China's War with Japan and River Town (an entirely different genre, but seeing as I mentioned it above I may as well include it here), but I think it's definitely a worthwhile read for anyone actively looking to expand their knowledge of China under Mao. The books don't really offer a detailed historical overview of the period at hand, but then they don't aim to, and at the very least, reading them should help in understanding the political priorities of the "Great Helmsman" and the effects of dogmatic, ideological policy decisions on China in the 20th century.
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