I Chose China: The Metamorphosis of a Country and a Man [Hardcover]

Sidney Shapiro (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"I have tried in these pages to tell something of what it is like to be a particle in the centrifuge that created one of the most momentous changes in Chinese history," writes Shapiro, a Jewish lawyer from New York, and a contemporary of the Westerners such as Edgar Snow (author the classic Red Star Over China) who fell under the Communist country's spell in the 1940s. In 1947, at age 32, Shapiro traveled to China to perfect his Yale University-learned Chinese, and fell in love with Mao's revolution and with Phoenix, a Chinese actress, writer and revolutionary, whom he married in 1948; in 1963, he became a Chinese citizen. While Phoenix traveled with her political work, Shapiro raised their daughter (who now attends college in the U.S.), wrote about Jews in China and witnessed many major events, such as the Cultural Revolution, the purge of the Gang of Four and the Tiananmen Square crackdown on democracy. In sharp contrast to Chinese expatriates who have come to the U.S. bearing stories of oppression, this expatriate American (who has visited the U.S. six times since his initial departure) retains the idealistic fervor that gripped many Western radicals in the 1960s: "Certainly the influence of the Chinese revolution on China and the world is beyond question. It has brought a better life for the Chinese people, a better chance of peace and prosperity for people of other lands." Even though Phoenix died in 1996, Shapiro plans, at age 84, to remain there. This rare firsthand account by an American of China's transformation in the last 50 years will fascinate anyone interested in this great unfolding story. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Shapiro, a Brooklyn-born lawyer with a modicum of wartime Chinese language training, arrived in China in 1947 at the beginning of the Cold War. Enchanted with the Communist revolution, he married a Chinese woman and settled in Beijing, where he led a privileged life while working for the Foreign Language Press. His loosely structured memoir weaves his own interesting story with a party-line history of the People's Republic that glosses over such horrors as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Although a prolific and talented literary translator, Shapiro here employs the ugly vocabulary of Maoist propaganda when inveighing against China's real or imagined enemies. It is hard to tell whether he remains a true believer in "the magnificent experiment" of the Communist revolution or is merely a skillful trimmer. Either way, if you are going to read only one book about China this year, don't make it this one. Recommended only for larger libraries with collections on Asia.
-Steven I. Levine, Univ. of Montana, Missoula
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Hippocrene Books (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078180759X
• ISBN-13: 978-0781807593
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,353,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very American Chinese, or a very Chinese American, February 1, 2003

By 

Eric Langager (Beijing, China) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Chose China: The Metamorphosis of a Country and a Man (Hardcover)

Sidney Shapiro went to China just after World War II. He had studied Chinese before coming, but he did not have a background in China, and had not planned to stay. He met and married a Chinese woman, and ended up staying on after the Communist takeover, working for the Chinese government as a translator. Shapiro is a very lucid writer, and easy to follow, but he seems obliged to rationalize some things about his adopted country that are hard to defend. For example, he says that Western missionaries left China after the war because they "were not needed anymore." Although I believe that his description of his life in China is an honest portrayal, there is always the feeling that he is sugarcoating policies that were clearly ill-fated. But Shapiro's book is just as noticeable for the things he concedes, such as the lack of press freedom in China. This book would be of special interest to individuals with an American frame of reference, because Shapiro is an American, and he writes in a very American style. Yet, he has lived and worked in China since just after World War II, a period of 50 years at the time the book was written in the mid nineties. Clearly, he has a better perspective on China than any other American born writer. You will not want to miss this book, but I would suggest reading a few of the others first, so that you have a little better framework from which to evaluate this one.

12 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and fascinating, May 1, 2000

By 

jj wang - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Chose China: The Metamorphosis of a Country and a Man (Hardcover)

I read his book with curiosity. I paid attention to hisnarration of political events and found them to be chronologicallyprecise. The only drawback is that he had neutralized many of the notorious events like Tiananmen Massacre and the Cultural Revolution etc.

The Chinese revolution is a tragedy from the very start when Dr Sun had to ally himself with the communists and Soviet Russia, but Mr Shapiro apparently was more influenced by the events starting from 1947 and the full-blown civil wars between communists and nationalists.

One thing I would like to point out is that Mr Shapiro, like all the communists and the people of the privileged class (enjoying free medicare, housing, retirement pay, car, and free trips to USA and Israel), would be doomed to ignore the nature of Chinese society, i.e., communists CASTE society, where 70-80% of Chinese population still live, without the aforementioned benefits: the daughters of those peasants burnt to death in prison-like toy factories set up by the joint ventures of red capitalists and foreign capitalists in SEZ and costal cities, the husbands and youths being the coolie responsible for buidling the skycrapers across China, and the wives tilling the fields under the sun and in the rains for 50 years. Mr Shapiro would not understand that while gestapos could move around in China or out of China using multiple passports, the people in the CASTE could not do so, with miners continuing to die on the yearly basis in caveins and explosions, the oil-workers continuing to be contained in Western China, and the peasant-born children forever bound to their birthplace.

-- CASTE means the children born would have to take mother's birth place as their locality of registration under communist doctrines, for sake of social stability and their ease of economic exploitation.

Certainly, I would give credit to his account of Chinese history, especially the part about Qin's terra cotta sooldiers, the civil service exams, the ancient legal system, and the history of Se Mu Ren (color-eyed people) and the Jew history in China. History-wise, I would only add that Han Dynasty was not a succession of Qin Empire in any sense. In fact, the beginning of Han is a RESTORATION of Zhou Dynasty system, namely, the restoration of dukedoms and principalities, as manifested by the enthronement of those kings and dukes in respective localities of those dukedoms and principalities, under the supervision of nominal king of Chu (a shephard boy, said to be the grandson of last Chu king) and the two generals of Xiang Yu and Liu Bang (later the first emperor of Han).

I would say a critical analysis of the book is worthwhile, and a comparative study with other books such as the one written by Mao's personal doctor from year 1955 to 1976 would be of great help.

4 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A sheltered and privileged American in China, October 27, 2003

By 

Li Guo Qing (Beijing) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Chose China: The Metamorphosis of a Country and a Man (Hardcover)

After reading Mr. Shapiro's "I Choose China", I have had much mixed feelings.

In the book, Mr. Shapiro's tone about Mao is almost identical as the "People's Daily" - the official Chinese newspaper of propaganda nature. He is positive about Deng XiaoPing and his successors as well.

In reality, Deng abolished Mao's policies and created a capitalistic society in 1979. It makes me wonder why Mr. Shapiro wrote about Mao according to the Chinese official guidelines while most Chinese people know very well that Mao was a man who committed unpardonable crimes to the Chinese people.

To many Chinese, Mao was a devil while Deng was a "kind of" saint. How can the devil and the saint be praised in the same time?

Mr. Shapiro narrated that his money was tight due to the Chinese currency being low in terms of the exchange rates. The cost of foreign travel was astronomical to the Chinese citizens. Yet he was able to travel to the US and Europe for many times including the pre-Deng years. How were his trips funded? The Chinese government gave him special treatment? I would think so. His grand daughter could even attend an expensive private school in Minnesota. Who paid for it? Alas, politics, connections, privileges etc... Were the readers informed? Nah...

To sum up, like they have done to many other westerners who live in China in the past and present, I think the Chinese government for political reasons has used Mr. Shapiro. These westerners were sheltered, were provided comfortable living, and were used for propaganda.

While I admire the great classical translation works by Mr. Shapiro (like Shui Hu and Family by Ba Jin), with much regret, I have to say that Sidney Shapiro only painted the bright side of the Chinese society in his book. The many years of darkness were simply buried.To state it unkindly, the author was a product of brainwash, Chinese style.