Customer Reviews

Mandarins and Merchants: After Tiananmen

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Chinese people come alive in these pages - as individuals, not masses. Nor, despite the catchy title, as mandarins and merchants.

The author began teaching English literature to seniors and graduate students at a Chinese university only three months after the infamous events in Tiananmen Square. She welcomed students to her room on campus, walked with them to markets, shops, restaurants and parks, and filled notebooks with a record of their conversations while they were still fresh in her mind. We marvel with her at the wide reading of some of her new friends, share their frustration as their hopes of graduate study in the United States fade away under new government restrictions, observe with her as brilliant girls uncomplainingly enact the traditional female roles of cooking and serving and cleaning up.

The author lets people's words and actions tell their stories. She seldom generalizes, yet her accounts of day-to-day interactions with her nearly two hundred students, and especially with those she sees most often, build a more convincing account of political pressure and social change than many a ponderous journal article.

For example: The library contains numerous copies of a few English novels, rather than a representative collection, "for the sake of equal access". The author and a few friends stroll outdoors to watch the beautiful Harvest Moon; the crowds who traditionally thronged the streets now see it on TV at home. No matter which American novel is translated, marginal notes advise the student that it "shows the class divisions and violence in American society". TV commercials are grouped by product: all brands of refrigerators are touted together, as are toasters and electric fans. On the first day of classes, teachers arrive to find filthy rooms and sooty windows; for the sake of equality, janitors and teachers begin their work on the same day.

The book is rich in such telling details. It serves as a timeless record of what sociologists call "participant observation" of an important segment of Chinese society. Unlike many such efforts, it is up close and personal, well written and fascinating.