Customer Reviews

Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

An outstanding book. There really is no better way to tell the story of China's incredible transformation over the past 25 years than through the lives of a few well-chosen characters. Pomfret delivers, beautifully. In a winning narrative, he skillfully braids the intricate tales of several classmates from Nanjing University, where Pomfret went in 1981, bunking with seven roommates in a tiny dorm room. Together, taking a variety of tracks over the next 20 years, those classmates end up capturing the striking horrors and unpredictable aspirations of the Chinese nation. By keeping in touch with them, as he matures into a first-rate journalist, Pomfret is able to gain a level of intimacy and knowledge about their lives that is unmatched in any narrative about Modern China. His writing is sharp and convivial. His story-telling ability matches the stories themselves, which are unbelievable.

Book-Idiot Zhou confides to Pomfret that he was a tormentor, not a victim, during the Cultural Revoluiton. Later, he alternates teaching Marxist history with deal-making in the urine industry. Song, a born Romeo, falls for an Italian woman and has sneak-away trysts. My own favorite was Little Guan, persecuted at age 11 for wiping herself with a piece of paper that said 'Long live Chairman Mao. She is a cheerful fighter, and bucks the odds over and over to succeed.

Pomfret is masterful. Armed with a fluent Chinese and a deft pen, he becomes an outstanding journalist, leading the coverage of Tiananmen, being formally expelled from China, and coming back again as Beijing Bureau chief for the Washington Post to establish himself as the dean of foreign correspondents. His newspaper stories were the gold standard of China coverage for several years. In this book, more than anything, it is his extraordinary ability to learn, ruminate and convey the stories of his Chinese classmates that stands out. Highly recommended.

Chinese Lessons provides great insight into contemporary China, which John Pomfret has learned to know from the ground up in a quarter century of close involvement with the country and its people.

Pomfret was 21 when he commenced his studies at Nanjing University in 1980, near the beginning of China's reopening to the outside world after the convulsive Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s. He has since devoted much of his life to reporting on China.

In Chinese Lessons, his first book, Pomfret skillfully weaves intimate stories of several Nanjing University classmates together with his own personal narrative as an astute observer of the country's explosive transformation from communist hermit to capitalist factory to the world.

The stories Pomfret tells of his classmates and their families stretch back to the revolutionary political movements of the 1950s and 60s and forward to the capitalist present. Through the window of these fascinating lives one sees the corrosive effects of Mao's catastrophic politics on human relationships and beliefs, effects that are still being felt today and will continue to shape the country's future for decades to come.

No great familiarity with contemporary China and its recent past is required to be riveted and informed by this compelling book. Highly recommended.

It doesn't happen often that I truly cannot bear to start the last chapter, much less turn the last page, of a book but 'Chinese Lessons' had a grip on me that still won't let go. What a story! I stayed up half the night to finish it and then read parts again.
This is a great book and that is not something I ever say lightly. Pomfret's fine-honed skills as a reporter are everywhere in evidence, as well as the depth of research that stands behind his observations and the conclusions he draws from them. He is a wonderfully gifted writer and has the ability to create multiple personalities and whole scenes with an economy of descriptive and effective words. His love of China is coupled with the objective eye of the true reporter and, there again, the professional shows, but unobtrusively. The thing I love most of all is the many ways in which Pomfret is able to teach his readers without any condescension whatsoever while, at the same time, revealing himself as a colorful, strong and fragile man. He is intimate with us and yet ever more impressive.
After working in Shanghai twice in the '80s I am now not at all sure I want to return to the China of Big Bluffer Ye but I treasure the memories I have even more and feel I have learned more from 'Chinese Lessons' than I would have absorbed in a lifetime of living there. This book is a never-to-be-forgotten work of brilliant reporting, stirring (and often funny) personal history, and true art. A Standing Ovation for John Pomfret!!!

Chinese Lessons" is an exceptional book, an ideal summary of the seismic changes China has undergone over the past 40 years. This transformation of China, from destitution and tyranny to a great power at the center of the world's economic cosmos, is perhaps the singlemost important story of our time. This book tells that story, but does so in a way that is uniquely and brilliantly crafted. It is as far from dry, sterile history writing as a book of such importance can be.

Pomfret's narrative is built upon the life stories of five of his Chinese university classmates. Their lives are retold with wit and insight. Cumulatively, the reader gains a very substantial and nuanced understanding of the forces, political and social, that pushed China first beyond the brink of chaos during the Cultural Revolution and then, over the succeeding 25 years, to a place of central importance in the world.

No country has ever grown so fast for so long as China over the last 25 years, nor undergone such a thoroughgoing process of radical, and largely positive change. How was this achieved? This book provides answers. Indeed, for me, the lessons learned from reading "Chinese Lessons" are many, and valuable. The book is a superb achievement.

A five star book. To most westerners, China is a huge enigma and this book sheds light on what is happening in China today. Most westerners have some idea of the horrors of the cultural revolution but may not understand how it permeated the lives of most of the educated Chinese. This book tells those stories and how these five classmates of his have fared,and about how new China works today. His personal story is also very interesting.

After I started reading this book, I couldn't put it down until I finished it all. This is by far the best book I've read about China written by a westerner. Many westerners claim to be an expert on China after making a couple trips to China. But this author really immersed himself into Chinese life to have a very deep understanding of china and her people. He shared a shabby college dorm room with a couple other chinese students in the early 80's - I don't think many westerners had this kind of experience.
Some people may complain that this book seems only focused on China's dark sides. We have to see China did make lots of improvement in many areas in the past 30 years. Maybe just because all the classmates this book covered seemed to have some personal tragidies. Nevertheless, this book is a still a masterpiece because all the characers in the book are real people. and the author did a marvelous job retelling their story with passion and brutal honesty.

One doesn't usually consider "escaping" to China. John Pomfret did. It was a means of putting maximum distance between himself and his father. He thereby became one of the first US-born students to enter China and take up university studies. Geographical distance or no, Pomfret's genes hold some coding for journalism and he dutifully and expertly recorded his encounters with schoolmates. Lodged with seven Chinese men of various backgrounds, he engaged five of them in conversations about their lives. What resulted was this compelling account of life in China under Mao and later.

Fundamental to their relating their lives was the tumult created by the "Cultural Revolution" - an event that undercut any progress China might have enjoyed after the overthrow of the Nationalist regime. In the West, the enormity of the upheaval on the population of China by that ideological imposition is difficult to envision. Friends and family alike were led to denounce others. Sons betrayed fathers, mothers were led to believe their efforts at upbringing their children were falsely based and colleagues viewed each other as wrongly inspired, if not downright treasonous. Intimidation was strongly inflicted, even murder was condoned as part of the "purification" process. So caught up was the entire society by the fervour of The Great Leap Forward, that today, as Pomfret demonstrates, it seems to require an outside observer to adequately depict it. Even Chinese who managed to leave the country, granting them a fresh perspective, aren't fully detached from the events. The author notes the strong pull of China, which remains "home" to these expatriates who return if opportunity permits.

To his great credit, Pomfret doesn't take a lofty view in dealing with his contacts. An astute journalist, he teases the stories of people like Big Bluffer Ye, Little Guan and others onto his pages. He's there almost entirely as an observer, introducing himself into the narrative only enough to entice the stories from his classmates. The stories are at once bleak and inspiring. One classmate learned of his parents' murder through a chance conversation. Another entered the ranks of the Red Guard, even terrorising his home village before returning to the city to become a successful businessman - collecting urine for pharmaceutical firms. A young woman, caught in the web of repression, still strives to provide a life for her child. It's a testimony to human endurance and the will to survive and succeed.

Pomfret's advantage over many China observers is his living experience there as a student, and his return allowing him to recapitulate the intervening years. This dual approach provides more, and better insights, into the present culture than those who manage only one journalistic snapshot. Given that the Cultural Revolution was a social disaster of high order, why has the ruling Party not been overturned? Pomfrets intimacy with his contacts provide many answers, some of them grim, on how that retention of power has been accomplished. Big Bluffer Ye proves worthy of his name as he personally transforms a section of his city from dilapidated slum to an illuminated mall, giving not a thought to those displaced by his endeavours. He strives for success and knows how to attain it.

The author's personal story is woven through his narrative with finesse - appearing more evidently in the second part of the book. He can express his own feelings without intruding on those of subjects. They are almost amazingly open to him, rendering the myth of "inscrutable Chinese" untenable. He records them without inflicting us with any more judgement than a sense of awe at how alien they sometimes seem, even after his long-term association. Even so, it's clear Pomfret's underlying resentment at being expelled from China after reporting on the Tiananmen Square debacle remains strong. He remains a North American, not a Chinese. An engaging, if disturbing, story this book is one that anybody wishing to understand the rise of China on the world stage must read. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

This book helps to explain the state of moral affairs in China.

Our book discussion group chose this book at the request of the three Chinese members. Formerly quiet during our book discussions, one woman now opened up and told us her story: a) Beijing 1968: 10 years old, her "bourgeois" family had been split apart and sent to distant work camps- she, deemed too young to send away, remained home ALONE in their apt and went to work in a factory every day, coming home to brain-washing at night from officials who visited her apartment. Her 13-y.o. brother returned from the camps, having lost his mind- she took care of him. Her grandmother was sent home to die "in front of my eyes- I was so shocked!" Later, her mother, sick with leukemia, was sent home. She never went to school during all this time. College entrance exams were announced when she was 17 and she borrowed books and began to study. "The only thing I could not study on my own was chemistry. I slept two hours a night but still I had nightmares when I slept." She was one of a very few who passed and was allowed to go to college. Her mother died a week after getting the news that her daughter had passed the exam. "Every day that I went to work in the factory I said to myself, 'I have to get out of here!' Now, when I go back to China, I see the same people that I worked with- still there. They are dead in their minds and in their hearts... No one wants to talk about these things in China- but I am writing a book and a play. I am afraid of nothing now."

I knew much of the information in this book but learned it in much greater detail, along with the psychological effects of the Cultural Revolution. Fascinating insight into today's Communist Party to a degree that is is scary to think about. Makes you really wonder how such a schizophrenic Party can function and what are they really up to when dealing with the West, who value human life so differently. Lots to think about. The stories of the classmates provide much thought provoking material to digest. Thank you Pan!

This is a must read. I just came back from one year in China and his observations are right on the money for the current situation in China. He put things clearly, and it is not a difficult read- I couldn't put it down.