Customer Reviews

South of the Clouds: Exploring the Hidden Realms of China

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In the Prologue to SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS, author Seth Faison tells a story about Farmer Yang's discovery of the famed terra cotta warriors near the city of Xi'an. Like much of this revealing look at the China few Westerners ever see, however, Mr. Faison's narrative is more than just a retelling of history. After years of being unrewarded and forgotten, Farmer Yang was hired to sign copies of tourist books about the excavation site. As Mr. Faison soon discovers, there are two Farmer Yang's working at competing stores. Which one is real, or is either of them the true discoverer? Mr. Faison finds the truth, but in doing so, we learn that the real Farmer Yang is being paid a paltry 280 yuan a month, about $35, for his services. Thus, in his first fourteen pages, the author demonstrates convincingly that we are embarking on a true insider's tour of a fascinating country.

In SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS, Mr. Faison describes his experiences as a student at Shaanxi Teachers University in Xi'an, then as a journalist in China for most of 1987 to 1999. He cuts his reportorial teeth at the Hong Kong Standard and the South China Morning Post, then moves to the New York Times where he works as a roving reporter out of Beijing before being elevated to Shanghai Bureau Chief.

Mr. Faison's writings are loosely connected vignettes, drawn from the wealth of people and events he experienced during China's economic and cultural opening in the 1990's. As a result, his stories range widely over the Chinese terrain, not just geographically, but also politically and culturally. We see up close and from the inside the events at Tiananmen Square in mid-1989, DVD piracy in Guangdong Province, the Falun Gong sect in Yunnan Province, the Chinese government's actions in Tibet, illegal immigration to the U.S. from Fujian Province, homosexuality in Shanghai, and transsexuality in Beijing. In each instance, however, Mr. Faison gives us more than just reportorial narrative. His are intensely personal stories, first-hand accounts of Chinese life told by the people who have been living them. We meet a policeman in Xi'an, a gay professor in Shanghai, a video pirate in Guangdong, a renowned transsexual choreographer, a Fujianese woman who risked everything to help send her husband to New York, and a Falun Gong practitioner whose life was changed by their version of qi gong.

The author's personal story connects these various threads into a whole cloth. As Mr. Faison learns more and more about Chinese culture and life, he grapples with issues in his own life: a sense of not being sufficiently masculine, fear of emotional closeness, need for acceptance as a Westerner in China, and a sense of meaning and purpose. His slow discovery of China coincides with his own discovery of self, a journey that leads him through sexual relationships with Chinese women, a near addiction to sauna massages, an intense relationship with the transsexual Jin Xing, and a flirtation with Buddhism resulting from a trip to Lhasa. A return visit to Tibet in search of the opportunity to witness a Whitmanesque sky burial appears to create the necessary epiphany, the "St. Paul struck by lightning" moment, when the author realizes he is ready to move on to the next stage of his life, to accept himself for what he is and to commit himself to another person.

SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS is an engaging and highly readable story of China, its people, and one man's struggle to understand both that world and himself. Mr. Faison gently recaps China's recent history through the stories of individual citizens, exposing everyday elements of Chinese culture as well as selected aspects of its underside. Having lived in China (Suzhou) off and on since 2001, I can attest to his deft touch in bringing the character of the country and its people to life. I sometimes felt I could see the people he met even as I read about them, imagining their faces and body language and behaviors.

As almost anyone who has spent real time in China will say, the experience is life-changing. Seth Faison illustrates how and why. I heartily recommend SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of modern China and the life and culture and hopes and fears and dreams of its people.

Most books about contemporary China end up being dwarfed by the size and complexity of this fascinating country. Faison's book is a classic case where less is infinitely more. By telling the story of his 15 years in China as a student and journalist, Faison takes us on a clear-eyed tour of modern China. He obviously loves the place but that has not clouded his judgment. On the contrary, it makes his observations even more telling, and entertaining. This book is funny, sad, inspiring and extremely honest.
The chapter about the 1989 Tiananmen protests is the best capsule history of that event that I have read. Faison was on the street when the first protests began. He knew all the student leaders. He then went back and unraveled the power struggle inside China's secretive leadership. The result is a fast-paced and insightful portrait of those heady days before -- and mournful days after -- the government sent in the tanks.
This book is a must read for anyone hoping to understand where China has been and where it is going.

Perhaps no journalist has written about China with the same mix of passion, fascination, adventure, amusement, frustration and disappointment as Seth Faison. From the day he arrived as a student in the early 1980s, to the end of his distinguished tour as the Shanghai correspondent for the New York Times more than 15 years later, Faison not only observed China's transformation, but reveled in it. He explored its cultural heritage, battled Communist bureaucrats, bargained with stock brokers, marched with democracy protesters, exposed movie pirates, escaped government minders in Tibet, and fell in and out of love. A book of this scope and ambition would founder in lesser hands. But Faison is a gifted tour guide. He uses his own privileged access and expert training to pry open Chinese society, and show it changed him.

Seth Faison, a long-time foreign correspondent in China, most recently for The New York Times, has written the sort of book about China that we have been waiting for years to read. With an impatience for the superficial, an eye for the occluded detail, a deep empathy for the people he encounters, Faison gently, almost deceptively, unveils the layers of assumptions and generalizations that pervade much writing about China. The Chinese he meets, stumbles upon and searches for, from his first years a student in the early '80s, to the Chinese army colonel who undergoes a sex change operation, are vivid, real people, not cardboard the caricatures that too often sprout up in China books. South of the Clouds carries you from the explosive development, cultural and economic, of Shanghai to the massacre on Tiananmen Square in June 1989, from video pirates in Guangdong, to Tibetan Buddhist monks enduring, and withstanding Chinese communist repression. This is a book you read settled into a comfortable chair, with a fine glass of burgundy and quiet jazz on the radio. It will transport you.

Rebeccasreads highly recommends SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS as a fascinating historical & social memoir as a Big Nose in China during the past twenty years.

Seth Faison seemed to be, with one glaring exception, in the right place at the right time as China unfurled from a closed, drab society into a bright new day of individuality, self-expression... & revolution. The contrast from his earlier years with the later ones is all the more poignant because of his own maturity & standing.

While Seth Faison tells much of the inner machinations of the Communist Party, its leaders & internecine power plays, as well as the hierarchies of journalism -- all of which is fascinating, neither is as interesting as the everyday complexities of social rituals, & the people he meets, loves, & leaves.

He is there when Mikhail Gorbachev visits; for the death of Hu Yaobang; the leadership battle between Zhao Ziyang & Deng Xiaoping; the Tiananman Square uprising; the opening up of Shanghai, & for when Falun Gong spread like wild fire.

In SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS we are gifted with glimpses of the way China thinks -- politically & ideologically; the philosophy behind its ineluctable conformity; its implacable bureaucratic state of mind; its beliefs, religion, & identity. We also learn how complex & poetic is its language; how multi-layered its mores; how to find the "back door" to just about anything, & how to think with two hearts.

Outstanding!

Faison has written a beautiful, affecting book enriched by subtle, revealing detail and informed by a profound knowledge of Chinese civilization. He charts the breathless rise of China over the last 20 years from Maoist hell-hole to one of history's most dynamic, and ever-shifting societies. In doing so -- and this is the greatest strength of the book -- Faison avoids the ponderous sort of thumb-sucking you get in so many books about China and its rise over the last 20 years. It's a book as lucid and as infused with meaning and understanding as Malraux's "Man's Fate".

I recently re-read Seth Faison's marvellous book on a return trip through China. I was in Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai and then Hong Kong all in the space of a week. Faison's book was like a becalmed harbor that I could return to -- every time I got on a plane or settled down to bed. His crackling prose and incisive view of China and the gentleness with which he explained what is a tangled and complex place were something I looked forward to each day. It's a great book and deserves the widest possible attention.

I've spent over 8 years in Asia with much of it in China and have always enjoyed reading books about China. Many though, do not come close to capturing the modern thoughts of China as it changes from an agricultural to industrial power as this book does.

If you are looking for a deeper understanding of how many Chinese feel on the street, with threads of intrigue, history and current events I heartily recommend this book.

Faison brings us closer to the people of China and gives us an honest view of himself and how his own personal uncertainties influenced his choice of going to China and his life there. He dates a woman, who like China, has deep secrets, and he dates another who's personal choices help him understand himself. He visits the sauna massage to have a human touch and someone to talk with.

I like this sort of armchair "travel" book because it skips the tourist sites, hotel/restaurant reviews and encyclopediac history in favor of narratives about the people and the times. You will not read about the Great Wall nor Summer Palace here, and the Xian soldiers are only here because they are part of a story about real, everyday people.

These narratives are rich and memorable: the emmigrants and their familes of Fujian, a bootlegger, a sadly compromised government guide in Tibet, the slow build up to and the ensuing confusion of Tienamen Square. The sky burial, haunts me now, a day after finishing the book.

I tend to not read "personal journey" narratives because, while important for the person on the journey and people in similar situations, I find to sustain interest.
That much said, I read "South of the Clouds" while on vacation in China, and it is one of the best, can't-put-it-down books I've read in a while. Seth Faison so deftly weaves his own story with that of China that they become a rich fabric of discovery for both a person and a nation.
Faison starts his journey in China in the early 1980s, long before the country adopted its current priorities of economic openness.
His descriptions place the reader in the midst of those bleak times in a provincial city still under Mao's thrall, and from there, he serves as an enthusiastic and capable guide through major and minor events he covered as a journalist over the next two decades, including Tiananmen Square and human smuggling rings. He also provides an unflinching account of his own journey of sexual discovery.
And a capper, Faison travels to Tibet and becomes one of the rare outsiders to witness a traditional "sky burial" high in the mountains. "South of the Clouds" is worth the effort for those chapters alone.