Customer Reviews

The Man Who Stayed Behind

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As an ethnic Chinese grown up in China and having lived in Europe and the US for 17 years, I find this book very readable and highly educational. I immensely admire the courage and candidness of Mr. Sidney Rittenberg in presenting his complete life experience in China, particularly those embarrassing experiences. It is exceptionally rare that an autobiography author does not elevate one's wisdom, ability, and strength, glorify one's success or accomplishments, forget one's own weakness and short-comes, and blame others for failures.

The 35 year life experience of Mr. Rittenberg in China is a dramatic odyssey and a unique story, which could only be found in a masterpiece novel. He went to China as a US army soldier equipped with Chinese language capability at the end of World War II, stayed as a UN aid worker, and then worked as an English language expert for Chinese Communist propaganda organs at the proximity of the power center. He witnessed and experienced how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) relentlessly purged itself to preserve its core strength and how the CCP leadership changed from grass-root to self-isolation. Although he worked very hard and tried everything to win the trust and acceptance of the CCP and was a member of the Party, ironically he was groundlessly accused of spying for the US and imprisoned twice for 16 years in total. He married two Chinese women. The first one divorced him during his first imprisonment, but the second waited for him for more than 9 years when he was in jail for the second time. His tour of duty ended with bringing his family to the States shortly after all the false accusation on him was cleared up.

This book can be read from several aspects or levels. One can enjoy it as a novel with a moving and amazing story. This is also a documentary of personal witness of Chinese revolution, Cultural Revolution, and astonishing changes in many aspects of China occurred during these 35 years. It clearly describes one's struggle in living in and getting accepted by an alien culture. Furthermore and furthermost, it is a highly educational book on valuable life lessons. Among many valuable life lessons, the following are just a few of such examples:

1. We are all educated that there never are too many friends in anyone's life; however, Mr. Rittenberg's first imprisonment tells us good friends may bring us troubles as well. This is such a common experience for many people, yet it is hardly acknowledged anywhere.
2. His second imprisonment could well be avoided if he shined away from many luminescent foci. He was not cunning enough to play the games. But how many of us know where we really belong to, until too late.
3. It is pity that the book did not elaborate the advice of his boss and friend, Mei Yi, to him never to accept a chief executive officer position. Although having literally taken this most valuable advice that he got in China and recorded in this book, Mr. Rittenberg might not truly comprehended the full implication of this advice. He never was one ordinary member of his comrades' club.
4. He lived a roller coaster life in China, and always in two extremes: either highly privileged and beloved, or dismissed and untrusted. He dined at a small canteen, befriended with many high rank cadres, and had access to inner circle information prior to his first imprisonment, and had a salary at least ten times higher than his colleagues and even higher than Chairman Mao (!!!), and lived in an apartment compound exclusively for foreign experts before his second imprisonment. Such privilege would undoubtedly build an impassable barrier preventing his colleagues from sharing and communicating opinions and thoughts with him at equal footing. If he was consciously aware of such a barrier, his life experience in China might be very different.
5. We all know the fact that anyone's life can make a sudden turn by some unexpected events or unknown people. Mr. Rittenberg's experience in China exemplified this belief.

After finishing reading the book, I could not stop thinking about the story. This book has left the readers with many issues to ponder, such as:
1. If his first Chinese wife did not divorce him while he was in prison, what will be the situation after his release and finding that she was no longer the same woman he loved and married to?
2. If he had no option to move back to the US with his family after his release from second imprisonment, how would he struggle to go back to work in the Broadcast Administration?
3. He had many high rank and influential friends. How had those friends tried to help him and his family when he was in prison?
4. As a privileged alien totally devoted to the CCP, he had to struggle so hard to get accepted by the Party. If he did not have all the privilege, what would be his life experience in China?

As a Chinese, I feel terribly sorry for all the pain and suffers that Mr. Rittenberg was imposed. It is often and common to see people, who had been mistreated by others and become the biggest victim of him- or herself, developed overwhelming bitterness and irrational prejudice. It was yet another amazing character of Mr. Rittenberg. After having had such experiences in China, he did not have any bitterness against China and/or Chinese people, and he did not blame anyone for his personal suffering (16 years in solitary confinement). At the end of the book, it becomes crystal clear that in spite of all the weakness he might have had, Mr. Rittenberg is a man of true integrity with a big heart, strength, courage, and honesty. Honesty is so precious; people practice it rarely. "The Man Who Stayed Behind" is a rare and valuable exception.

Anyone who has made seeking truth his or her quest should read this book. With a painful honesty, Rittenberg accounts a sincere believer's failed efforts in pursuing idealism. He does not shun away from the truth that idealism and stupidity were often twins in human history. In fact, "faith" can make one blind and an involuntarily contributor to harm. It took the author a lifetime - including 16 years in the prisons of the system he believed in - to realize this simple truth. An ordinary person might have woken up a lot earlier, but not a believer. Is this faith or stupidity? The reader should draw his or her own conclusion. Nonetheless, what I really want to say is: although his effort in pursing ideals has failed, his life experience is not a waste; we can all learn from his lessons. In this sense he is still a hero, or in classic Chinese terms, a "hero by failure". To the reviewer below who called Rittenberg a "coward" with the "integrity of a worm" I want to ask, could you do better than him in those circumstances - in the bombing and in the prisons? That is a very pointed question.

Rittenberg's Chinese name Li Dunbai has been known to me since my childhood during the Cultural Revolution in China, though I never knew him personally, and still don't know him now. In this book it is his candid and thorough accounts of the personal experiences of the familiar history that grab me, from the opening page to the last. Unlike some other bestseller memoirs on the same period of China, such as "Wild Swans," which emphasize the virtue while downplaying the deficits of the protagonists, Rittenberg hides nothing about his own personal weakness and mistakes. Anyone who has gone through the same period knows that we were all participants, no matter how noble or gaudy our motives were, no matter you admit it or not. To deny this and dress up as a pure victim or even a hero is truly a shame. Only by facing our mistakes and failures honestly we can help ourselves.

The Kirkus Reviews above claim that this book is a "dramatic odyssey of an American who cast his lot with mainland China's Communists following WW II--and who lived to regret it.", I wonder if the reviewer really read the book or not, since the author expressed explicitly in serveral places as well as the feeling run throught the book that he never regreted any of his experiences in China, instead found himself enriched, strengthened, and grateful for it;

Another reviewer's comment that "How this man earn a living in the US as an expert on a country he never seemed to understand is beyond me.", is actually beyond myself. I doubt if a man can't at least learn one or two things about a country if one lived there for 35 years, especially with about half of the time shut in a prison, devoting to a course he believed in. What the course is and whether it is really there or an illusion, is another matter.

In my own experience the book could be read on serveral levels: a personal autobiography from youth to the old age; the story of an American youth's adventure in the middle kingdom across 1949; Chinese revolution, from Yanan period to its end in late 70s, in the eyes of a foreigner of left wing political persuation, especially as an active (foreign) participant's memory/story of Culture Revolution. The experience is rich as well as unique, writing clear and smooth, reading the book is highly enjoyable and educational.

But here also weakness of the book lies, that different themes and levels of discourses can be in conflicts to each other: chinese revolution and Culture Revolution could be too big, social and impersonal to constraint and present in a biographical framework; events and various persona, from Chairman Mao to individuals living around the author, could only be presented from one perspective, without other independent references.

Still, the experiences are unique, stories moving, themes grand, the book is highly recommended.

Lots of people have derided Rittenberg in this space, most seemingly because of Rittenberg's religious-level belief in communism in his earlier years. Read this book not as a defense of communism (it isn't, at all), but as an intensely personal journal of one life, lived at the core of the PRC, from 1946 to the late 1970s. Rittenberg, now in his mid 80s, gives a unique perspective on the early leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, and the vision, plus the folly, that intertwined with the early years. Whether one believes that he earned his 15+ years of imprisonment or not, no feeling human can fail to empathize with those, including him, who were jailed by the regime.
In recent years, the PRC has admitted that the Cultural Revolution was a mistake, and therefore these years have seen a flurry of what's called 'scar literature' in China. Rittenberg's work cover much more than just his years in jail during the Revolution--it provides a remarkably close-up look at the emergent PRC in its first 25 years. Read it without fail if you seek to understand the roots of China today.

As someone who had followed events in China during the Mao led period, Rittenburg's book is a strong revealation of the politics that were taking place in that era. He was in a unique position for a westerner to know many of the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party prior to its victory over the Chinese Nationalists and to see how it operated in the transition to governing the China. It is easy to see how someone who had seen the corruption and warlord Nationalists look with great admiration to the Communist alterantive. Rittenburg commentary is honest and transparent. He believes that he is being tested when he was in fact being used. The pain of learning that politics trumped the revolution is visceral.

His book is a very valuable contribution to getting a grasp of what happened during the four or so decades he lived in China, and a momentous time it was. It is heartfelt and quite well written, and in my opinion quite innocent considering what the author went through as far as two multi year prison terms. The book ends at the end of 1980's when the next challenge to the legachy of the revolution took place - the move to a capitalist hybrid. I would have liked to see an epilogue that discusses the continuing evolution of China into a global economic power and the related issues of whether political democracy will emerge with that economic power. My recent trip to China was remarkable in seeing the use of smart technologies and for the most part great rise in living standards. At the same time there is little to see of what the core beliefs of the country and its leadership are at this point. The book is an important read for anyone who wants an insider experience of one of the most important changes in our time.

This book blew my away. I can't believe that it hasn't been turned into a movie or mini-series yet. Sidney Rittenberg's unparalleled front row seat to China in the 20th Century is an AMAZING book. I just happened to hear about this book, and I was so excited to get my hands on a copy.

Not only is the author's story powerful story, his writing collaborator did an outstanding job with the text. The book is boiled down to its basic and seemingly complicated material is made highly readable. Mr. Rittenberg was lucky to work with an outstanding writer on this once-in-a-lifetime story.

This book is a MUST for Sinophiles or history buffs.

Few books written about Communist China are pleasant to read because of the experiences related, this is certainly one of them. Mr. Rittenberg's quixotic adventure in China was tragic-comic to an unbelievable proportion but still his undying idealism commands one's respect.

I have googled and read his speeches about China on internet and I think he is one of the wiser guys in matters of China. He knows China inside out.

As a former student of Mr. Rittenberg, I first learned of his experiences through his courses. I then read his book, and was more than pleased to find that his book conveys his experiences in a remarkably "real" manner. There is much to learn from this man, whether one reads his book for pleasure or scholastic reasons. I highly recommend it.

One of my friend at Italy introduced this book to me. Luckily I found this used one on Amazon which is cheap and almost new.

I have kown Sid, and Yulin Rittenberg for some time. They are the most giving funny couple I know.
What he has gone through, and his love for the Chinese people and America is a combination of warm thoughts and makes me feel proud that I know the two of them. They are both full of humor and give their time to anyone who needs them.
I am so honored to know both of them.