Customer Reviews

Daughter of China: A True Story of Love and Betrayal

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I had mixed feelings about this book ... it is well written and I remained interested throughout, but I became increasingly disenchanted with the author, Xu Meihong. There seemed something rather cold and calculating about her. Larry Engelmann on the other hand, struck me as being generous and loving, but naive. Some of the story seemed improbable and while I believed most of it, I know enough about China to have some scepticism. I felt sorry for the men in Meihong's life: her first and second husbands, as I felt they were far more heroic and giving than she was. While doing her best to make a case for leaving her first husband on the grounds that he would be better off without her, and that she was doing him and his career a favour by divorcing him, I found her arguments unconvincing. Her motivation throughout the book seemed mostly self seeking and her love for Lin Cheng and Larry Engelmann rather lacking in depth and committment. I was not altogether surprised to find at the end of the book that she had left Larry.

I was also disappointed at her scant reference to the Tienanmen Square massacre. I'm sure there was much more that she could have said, especially as an eye witness.

Xu Mehihong is obviously an ambitious person and her story portrays this aspect of her personality throughout. She achieved her ambition to get to the West too, albeit through dishonest means. But I cannot say that my final impression of her was one that I particularly liked. All in all, this book left a slightly sour taste in my mouth!

I know the author of this book and have read his earlier books. I have always loved the way he tells a story and he is at his best in this one. He writes about the life of a Chinese woman he met in 1988 and goes into her family background for several generations. And he keeps himself out of the main picture until near the end of the story. Because I know the story in real life I am affected very much by what is revealed here. I love the story and I love the writing. I think anyone who grew up in Asia and who knows what life is like under a Communist government will see the truth in every word of this book. It is about difficult situations bringing out the best in people. My only wish is that it could be longer and have the real hero of the story talk more about himself and what made him do the things he did. But he chose not to write it that way. This is a book that makes you feel very good to be alive and to be able to be in love. I just wish it had a happy ending. I disagree with the author. The ending is not happy, despite his insisting that it is. It is not happy. But it is never to be forgotten.

Last week on a trip to Belgium I started to read a Tom Clancy book. I ventured into an English bookstore in Brussels and stumbled upon "Daughter of China." Being an American man recently married to a Chinese woman, I couldn't resist this read. Haven't been back to finish the Clancy book yet - this one was far more interesting and suspenseful.

I found this a great account of Chinese culture as it truly contrasts with western culture - things I've learned through my own relationship. The accounts of pervasive curruption and political power plays for self-interest were amazing, and probably generally true. The way people were thrown off their land and left with nothing but to suffer during the early days of Mao Communism were fascinating.

Unfortunately, I couldn't help but question Meihong's sincerety in her relationship with Larry. I think she must have used him to get to America. This feeling brings into question the truth of her account throughout. I also pity "The General." If still alive, this book can't be doing this interesting character any good. Meihong and Larry are obviously two very complex people. I find it hard to believe Larry, a traveled, well read and previously divorced man is really so naive. All of these thoughts have given me days of pondering, so I have to say this is the best book I've read in a long time. I'd like to meet both of the authors and share experiences.

The relationship between China and the United States is extraordinarily complex, seemingly made up of equal parts hope, racism, & misunderstanding. The hope is a product of over a century's worth of Protestant missionaries trying to bring the Good Word to an enormous population of potential converts and of millions of Chinese immigrants finding economic opportunity here in the States. The racism too flows both ways, with each nation's people believing the other's to be barbarians. The mutual misunderstanding comes from myriad sources, but probably has its greatest impetus in the most fundamental difference between the two cultures, the difference which paradoxically serves as the main attractant and repellent between the two : American openness and Chinese reserve. In a sense, what each values in the other is what it has least of itself. The image of the "Ugly American," though partly a caricature, is also fair to the extent that it's a product of our inability to keep our opinions, ideas, and feelings to ourselves. Meanwhile, the competing image of the "inscrutable Oriental," though freighted with racist overtones, reflects American inability to understand people who don't "share" as much of themselves as we do. It's easy to see then that two peoples who are so different would find each other intriguing. Daughter of China plumbs these themes, both on a personal and a political level, and, though a little uneven, serves as a valuable look at one Chinese woman's confrontation with East and West.

Meihong Xu was raised in the rural village of Lishi. A devoted Maoist from an early age, even to the point of allowing political suspicions to color her perceptions of her father and a devoted Aunt, she joined the People's Liberation Army in 1981 and was chosen to become one of the "twelve pandas," a dozen young women selected for an elite intelligence unit and sent for special training at the prestigious Institute for International Relations in Nanjing. Once there however, she became a disciple of an at least mildly pro-Western officer, known as "the Coffee General" for his Western ways, including a preference for coffee over tea. He hoped to open an institute which would immerse trainees in American culture and so Meihong was sent in 1988 to the Center for Chinese and American Studies, a joint venture of Johns Hopkins and Nanjing University. There, in addition to her studies, she was asked by a friend in the Ministry of State Security to keep an eye on Larry Engelmann, an American instructor they suspected of spying.

In accordance with her assignment she cultivated a relationship with Engelmann, but soon found him too naive and trusting too conceivably be an intelligence operative. Moreover, his innocence, good humor and emotional openness was so appealing to her that she found herself becoming enamored with him. Engelmann, for his part, lonely, unhappy, and thousands of miles from home, fell in love with her. But their nascent relationship was abruptly ended when Chinese Intelligence ordered Engelmann out of the country and arrested and interrogated Xu, apparently motivated in large part by the desire of certain elements within the government to use her to get at the Coffee General and other pro-West officials. Xu ended up being expelled from the PLA and sent back to her village, to work as a peasant. But she eventually got word to Engelmann in the States and the remainder of the book details their efforts to get her out of China.

Though the story is billed a romance, there's an awkward unreality to the relationship between Xu and Engelmann, who seem at times to be in love with the idea of each other more than with the actual person. But the political portrait of modern China more than makes up for any weaknesses in the love angle. Meihong Xu's journey from committed daughter of the revolution to doubt-filled young adult to San Jose, California makes for really compelling reading. One of the most unfortunate aspects of the American-Chinese relationship, and this I think is mostly a product of latent racism, is that we in the West do not take seriously the mass murder, repression, and aggression of China's Communist government. We are all too willing to minimize their crimes, or excuse them altogether, as an unfortunate byproduct of an understandable nationalist reaction to decades of Western imperialism.

It would be better for all concerned, but especially for the people of China, if we in the West understood the reality of life there better. The best way to develop this understanding is for a dissident literary tradition to emerge, as it did in the Soviet Union. This has begun to happen with books like this one, the works of Anchee Min (other than the unfortunate Becoming Madame Mao), and other authors like Ha Jin. Most significantly, Philip Short's great recent biography of Mao goes a long way to revising the largely benign view of him, and the recently released Tiananmen Papers may prove a turning point similar to the publication of Solzhenitsyn's devastating Gulag Archipelago.

The ultimate value of this book then lies not in its love story, which is charming enough though ultimately not terribly compelling (to anyone but the participants); it lies instead in its revelatory portrait of one young woman's experiences in Red China, a nightmare world no less repressive and monstrous than the USSR. In this regard it is invaluable and I recommend it to anyone who still harbors the belief that Maoist China has been qualitatively different from any of the old Iron Curtain regimes.

GRADE : B

Meihong Xu and the other young girls of China in the 1970's felt they could do anything. They were idealistic with romantic notions of their country China. It was the perfect country. They knew that all around the world young people longed to have the same kind of life they had. But over the years, Meihong's dreams would fall apart and a kind of cynicism rare in the very young would set in. How could this happen? How could idealistic ardor turn into gloomy pessimism in the course of a few years?

Meihong was admitted into a very select group of young women, the first women cadets in the People's Liberation Army called the Pandas, because they were considered China's treasures. They were to be trained to conduct espionage against China's many enemies, to be spies. Every part of their lives was regulated: the food they ate, the books they read, the movies they saw, the words which they spoke, the clothes they wore, their private and public lives. Every thing. She was trained to lie, because appearance was more important than reality, but slowly her idols began to fall, beginning at the end of her first year at the Institute.

After graduation, when Meihong worked as an aide for a general, who wanted social and political change in China, she was sent to the Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing. It was here she met her first Americans, and it was here she fell in love with one.

Meihong's story is a fascinating picture of a China never seen by Americans, one which examines the duplicity and daily betrayal with which the Chinese people must lead their lives in order to survive. Where being a good citizen does not depend on behavior, but on perception, and where success can always come to a sudden end because of jealousy or envy. Where disingenuousness and deviousness are the names of the game, and he who plays it best may win. But then he may not.

Daughter of China is a page-turner which reads like a suspense novel. Excellent beginning for a first-time author.

Mari Lu Robbins

This was an incredible book. The series of events that led to the marriage of Meihong Xu and Larry Engelmann and Meihong's flight from China were related in a most heart-quickening way. It brought my pity for her naiveté in the beginning, but later awe for her mettle. An eye-opening look at the Chinese political sytem during the Chinese Cultural Revolution caused feelings of disbelief and disgust, but also a sense of gratitude for personal rights guaranteed by other political systems throughout the free world. The unexpected ending to this book brought tears to my eyes and a bit of sadness as well.

I read this book mainly for becoming better aquainted with my Dramatic Interpretation for this year. It was enjoyable read. It is very captivating and keeps you hooked into the story. I liked this book best because it truly reflected China's political atmosphere. Being from China, I found many incidents and event easy to understand and relate to. Plus I've always been fascinated by the ins and outs of the "communist" countries like China and Russia.

This book, since it is autobiographical, really does a good job in giving an insider's view to the intolerance that existed at the time. It does a wonderful part of describing the location where Meihong was held and questioned for many months as a result of possibly leaking out valuable information. It gives an inside view to the politcal power struggles that affected China and quite possibly, other countries as well.

As I said before, the book is suspenseful and easy to read. However, at the end, there wasn't much of a lasting impression. I was more interested in the sequence of the events instead of the characters. The style of the book is simple and narrative. The charm of the book was not in the love and romance between Larry and Meihong but rather in its depiction of the political and societal (is that a word) of a small, elite sector of communist China.

My favourite parts of the book were mostly likely contained in the scenes that weren't directly related to the story. The story of Red Aunt and how she was always ostracized and the story of Meihong Xu's grandmother were very touching.

This book is really great for people who are interested in political situations in China in recent years. But I wonder if Meihong was truthful completely or not in telling her stories. I just compared Meihong with the author of Wild Swans Yung Chang. In Wild Swans I was fascinated by Yung Changs parents and didn't even have slightest doubt about her integrity. I was very happy to know that there were some people like them during the most difficult time of China in modern history. In Meihong's book, I was very dissappointed by her calculative mind and betrayal of her late husband. This is very well written (probably by Larry) captivating book but left me wondering about Meihongs motives.

The book was certainly hard to put down. Like some other reviewers, I came to question Meihong's emotions for her two husbands. Near the finale of the book, I came to doubt my earlier feeling of what she was really like, a character I had come to empathize with. I think perhaps this is because although the book is written in the first person narrative, I suspect Mr. Engellman holds the lion's share of credit as author. I think a lot of the time we are seeing Meihong like he wants us to, whereas I think most readers at the end find reason to question her motives. I can't comment on the realism of the portrayal of workings of Chinese politics, but overall this certainly is a fascinating story. No matter what you think of it in the end, it is a thought-provoking and riveting read.

This book was well written in the sense of giving the reader an in-depth look at how the PLA works (or worked since this was written years after Mao Zedong). The order of the book was a bit confusing. It starts with the author in prison and then goes into a history of her village. Then, she describes her interrogation and then back to her past and how she became a PLA soldier. Yet, despite this minor annoyance, I couldn't put the book down.

However, it is not a love story. I never got the sense that Meihong Xu was ever in love with Larry Engelmann. The reader has to keep in mind that their marriage was ending at the time the book was written, so that could be a reason why the "love" was downplayed.

Overall, I would recommend reading the book to get a first person perspective on what life is like as a PLA soldier, but not because this is a love story.