Customer Reviews

Legacies: A Chinese Mosaic

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The author of Spring Moon, the story of her sister's youth in China during the Cultural Revolution, has written another book, a collection of stories of hard life in China during the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath, up to the disaster in Tiananmen Square. Shanghai born Bette Bao Lord uses her skill at explaining China by drawing on her early life there, and her family, cultural, and literary connections to China. These stories are short biographies, mostly autobiographical, of artists, educator, writers, and intellectuals caught up in the turmoil so constant in China over recent centuries. She interweaves these stories with her own, of the times she accompanied her husband, Winston Lord, to the region in his various government positions, but primary while he served as Ambassador from 1985-89. Similar to the couple itself, both halves of the book are interesting without its partner, but complement each other and create a whole greater than if they stood alone. Lord has an intimate touch with both her identities, Chinese and American, and explains the conflict she often feels without over sensitive grousing. She accepts it and attempts to reconcile the two, without dwelling too much when she fails. Between her family and official connections, she was introduced to many Chinese whose pain is hard to read about. Its harder still to imagine oneself having to experience their lives and surviving. I was struck with their stoicism following their time as victim, or victimizer , and their apparent forgiveness of countrymen who abused them during China's time of troubles. I don't think I would be capable to forgive or even understand. Perhaps survival grants its' achievers skills in human emotion as its graduation present. Almost all the stories in the book were of Chinese immersed somehow in the culture elite of the country, those with whom Lord would come into contact. I want to know if their experiences were the norm for Chinese, or more prevalent of their contemporaries. The end of book came too abruptly for me, the two main stories, that of China and one of its daughters, remaining unfinished. Both their continuing stories will make for interesting lives, conversations, and books for the future.

Bao Lord's book is a montage of stories about her family and friends in China against first, the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution, and then Tienamen Square in 1989. There have been many books that have come out in the 1990's on the Cultural revolution, an unimaginably painful period of 10 years in China during which Mao Zedong turned the people against one another as a way of deflecting challenges to his own power. The country descended into chaos as the Red Guard, basically a group of millions of teenagers set loose, destroyed everything in its path. Thirty million people died during this period! It is hard to imagine living through what Bao Lord's characters have endured--betrayal by relatives and friends, the death of a child, imprisonment for no reason, torture, the destruction of education, art and culture--it goes on and on. Many of these stories are told in the characters' own words, transcribed from audio tapes sent to her by people who wanted their stories told. The stories of Bao Lord's own family are equally absorbing, especially of her grandmother, who defied tradition and paid the price.

I listened to the audio version of this book, read by the author. Generally I find that professional readers do a better job, but this book was an exception--Bao Lord reads with great emotion in a slightly inflected voice but otherwise no acccent. She does an excellent job.

Anyone traveling to China is well-advised to read several memoirs of modern China. It is easy to look at China today and see rapid modernization, signs of free enterprise, and a bustling economy. Books like Bao Lord's remind us that China has a long way to go.

How much do you know about recent Chinese history? I knew a bit, but reading A Chinese Mosaic, by Betty Bao Lord, really brought the recent human tragedies of modern China home.

Bao Lord intertwines two main themes: the story of her experiences as an American citizen who emigrated from China as a youngster and is returning as the wife of a American diplomat, and the stories of Chinese friends and acquaintances, often given to her on audio tape, and recounting the sordid and tragic tale of the last 50 years of China. She does all this against the backdrop of the mid to late 1980s and the Tiananmen Square protests by college students.

This book derives much of its power from the simple stories Bao Lord relates. Whether it's the man who stays alive locked in his office (for years) because his son flys a kite to reminds his father of his presence, or the stories of the real life excesses of the Red Guards, burning any of the "Four Olds," these stories are touching and real. Even her own family story has a certain pathos, as we learn about her grandfather dying three years before she was able to visit, her aunt calmly dying of cancer, and a sister who only learned that she was adopted by happenstance.

The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the other major events of modern Chinese history are only touched on as they affect the people in the stories told, but even that was enough to shock me with what this nation endured. In fact, it's even more shocking than it was when I read about it in the history books, because the folks in the stories are real people.

This book is filled with fascinating anecdotes about the cultural revolution. I had visited China shortly before reading it and felt everyone should go there as you don't appreciate the society you live in without contrast. For example, there is an anecdote about a fellow whose wife was sent away by the government and he missed being together with her so much that at dinner he set her place and got into her clothing so as to feel she were still with him. What this book did for me was make me more aware of how we all are at the mercy of social currents and this awareness enables me to accept my helplessness and helps me to dissipate my anger. Peace of mind, afforded by knowledge, not ignorance is worth a great deal to me. This book, I found, easy to read and educational.

The author of this book is a writer and the wife of an American Ambassador to China from 1985-1989. The book is very well written and is a memorable read. It is a series of short stories that the author transcribes for the reader. The stories are for the most part tales that were slipped to her by strangers who had been victimized during the Cultural Revolution in China. They know, of course, that the author is an American and they want someone to know what happened to them. Some have lost complete contact with their wives and children. They have been living in secret like fugitives hiding their knowledge and skills from the resentful authorities. They were scholars, actresses, teachers, journalists, ex-soldiers and the like. They all had been a part of the established order prior to Mao. All the stories are tragedies. Successful and educated people who were forced into the fields, teachers who were allowed to be beaten by their students, prosperous individuals who were forced into the rice paddies, knowledgeable people who hid their knowledge from the authorities. They were all the victims of the New Regime.

There is always the thought that the book is American propaganda and if it is, it was nevertheless done very well. Knowing the little I know of China and the Communist Revolution, I find it easy to believe the writer's stories yet find them very strange and certainly different. Mao was clearly a strange fellow. He was educated but feared and did not trust the educated class.

The book does not contain any stories of those that are/were living contented lives under the new regime and we must assume that there were and are tens or even hundreds of millions. So the book could be considered lopsided in that respect. But regardless, the stories supplied by the author ring true and are tragic ... and tragic in ways that we as Americans, could hardly imagine. The author takes us on a trip to the strange underside of the Cultural Revolution in China and its unique way of dealing with its dissidents. It is personal and dumps the reader inside the confusion that was and still is, I would imagine, the Chinese Revolution.

I am left with the realization of how little I know about China, its culture and its people. The author has, with her words, style and manner of expression attracted me to the country of her birth. So one must say that she obviously has done a good job.

Richard Edward Noble - The Hobo Philosopher - Author of:

"Hobo-ing America: A Workingman's Tour of the U.S.A.."

This is the most amazing book I read in a while, in touch me in all the ways possible. I simply love this book so much. It is a story telling that one could not be found anywhere else. Bette Bao Lord surpasses Amy Tan with Spring Moon. Peerless in its artisry and beauty, Lord has done wonders.

There is nothing pleasant about the true stories that Bette Bao Lord, Chinese-born, American-raised, recounts for us from the taped testimonials brought back from her wife-of-U.S. Ambassador visit during the Chinese Spring of 1989. But "pleasant" is not what you get out of Legacies. Rather, a collection of bewildering and painful, but crystal-clear first-person descriptions of just a few of hundreds of millions of Chinese people's lives. The Chinese People as told by Chinese people. Interspersed with Bao Lord's own observations from her perspective as both Chinese, and American.

So many contradictory thoughts rushed over me as I read these terrible stories, told with patience, irony, and even hope and pride by the people who suffered them. Bao Lord is one of the few writers whose use of the word "holocaust" outside of the Jewish experience that I found myself accepting. Not because the Chinese experience was equivalent, but that it was commensurate in its insanity. China, where a proud and ancient people fought together against foreign enemies, then fought Nationalist against Communist, both in the hopes of a better future. But the following years were much more frightening. Each successive regime turning all of society upside down -- rich made poor, intelligent made slaves, peasants made taskmasters. Betrayal made mandatory, families cursed for generations. And yet each individual accepting fate more or less with equanimity, and a stubborn hope for progress when every word, even thought, might turn out a few years later to be punishable by imprisonment or death.

I could not help thinking, at times, as an American, how different our perspective is, with our declared vision of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". The Chinese people seem to love life, cherish liberty though it has been so very rare for them, and to be pursuing something other than happiness. I am not sure what it is, but I wish them well. Me, I am simply frozen in my tracks after reading, receiving, these Legacies.