Customer Reviews

Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a Chinese journalist, I've read several books on China by foreign correspondents. But this one, Ian Johnson's "Wild Grass" stands out exceptionally and inspirationally. It's based on solid reporting, which had to entail lots of courage, wisdom, patience and critical understanding of China's political system. Even I couln't have imagined to be able to do the same reporting--travel extensively in china's remote hinterland, most of which is unaccessable to foreigners, evade police tracing, more amazingly, track down those falungong practioners. But this book is not just a piece of serious journalistic work, it's also literary. I think the writing is beautiful and delicate. It's also well-researched. The narrative of current affairs is smoothly interwoven with the background of history and culture. I am very impressed by the author's wide and deep knowledge and his profound understanding of China. I also learned a lot from the book.

I remember a former London Times China correspondent once wrote that a lot of western journalists in the past came to China for a sense of mission. I think it's also true with Ian Johnson. However, I think he came to China not only with a sense of mission, but also to understand the country and the people, to experience the history and culture that had already fascinated him. I think he is one of the few western journalists who don't have a prejudiced mind and have set their minds and hearts into the country's painful and unsetteling reality. And by focusing on three ordinary Chinese people and their seemingly futile struggle against the govertment, Johnson has gotten to the core of most paradoxes in china. Indeed, it's a very insightful book with beautiful language. It's worth reading.

I've lived in China since 1999, and I often read stories about
China in the Western media that I simply don't believe. Others
report on abuses that do occur here without giving a reader any
understanding of why. So, China remains "inscrutable." (I'm
rolling my eyes...)

China is a complex subject. How can a Westerner who has never
been here know what's happening? China is so far away and
shrouded in a bit of mystery, some due to the sheer length of
its history and some due to the power of the Party. In my
case, I don't speak Chinese, so getting past the public face is
impossible.

Ian Johnson of the Wall Street Journal won a Pulitzer Prize for
his reporting on China. He speaks the language. And, he's one
heck of a fine journalist. In WILD GRASS, he recounts the
stories of three ordinary Chinese citizens who find themselves
fighting the repression of the system, risking imprisonment
and even death.

Johnson understands "the big picture," and after reading this
book, so will you. A nation is not just a single entity. It's
made of people. All nations, not just the one you live in. So
what are the people in China like? Read this book, and you'll
feel like you've met some of them. A peasant lawyer, a young
architectural student, a bereaved daughter. Poor farmers in
Yulin and Party officials in Beijing.

Johnson also brings the scenery to life, makes the unfamiliar
familiar, and captures many little details and episodes and
ironies. A compelling subject in the hands of a masterful
author.

China is experiencing unprecented economic development. What
effect will this ultimately have on its social and political
system? I don't agree with all of the author's conclusions --
it surprises me how much I agree with the Party -- but it
doesn't matter. That's part of the beauty of this book. To
bandy about phrases like "evil empire" is the simplistic
idiocy that will (I hope) eventually doom morons like Dubya.
Can we please move past that and try to genuinely understand?

There can be no doubt that what Johnson reports in this book
is factually accurate. If you want to learn about China, this
is a good place to start. And then, form your own conclusions.
There's plenty of room for you to do that here. Which, in the
end, is what journalism is all about.

I'm quite glad that I read this book. This is literature, same
as George Orwell, who I also don't always agree with. And
agreement does not matter. Spurring a reader to think is what
matters. Johnson can do that with the best of them.

This is an unusual book because it gives a picture of China that we rarely see--China off the beaten track.
The author, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of China, tells the story of three people whose unusual stories show how change is coming to China at the grassroots level. I found this more useful than the run-of-the-mill generalizations that one reads about on China, about how it's the next superpower or the next enemy. Instead, we have an up-close look at China by looking at these three people. An added bonus is that the stories are cleverly told so you're wondering what's going to happen next. In a way, they're kind of like three suspenseful short stories, although they are true stories and the author gives references and endnotes explaining how he obtained the information.
As someone who has been involved with China for several years, I also thought that the author shows a deep knowledge of China--his understanding of Chinese religions, traditions and literature shines through repeatedly.
If there's one thing I'd quibble about it is that the author saved the best story for last. The story on the Falun Gong spiritual movement is clearly better than the other two stories: it's not only longer but also seems to have for my money more suspense. Personally, I believe in leading off with your strongest hitter so I think it would have been better to start with this story rather than holding it back. But the other two stories are good, too, and this way the reader finishes this quick-paced book with the feeling of having read something very special.

If you're looking for an inside look into China, this is your book! It's not often that one thinks of a non-fiction book as a "page turner," yet I found myself speeding through the book, disappointed when I came to the last page. Cheering for the many underdogs depicted, Mr. Johnson's light and lively writing style helps to paint a clear picture of the social inequities found in modern day China. I particularly enjoyed the second story about the demolition of the old hutongs to make way for new construction. Johnson's prose paints a vivid picture of the beauty that is now forever lost and the fight the long-time residents have sadly lost.

I've travelled to China twice and never felt as connected to the people as I do now. China seems to be struggling with its identity, working on cleaning up its image as the 2008 Olympics approach. Wild Grass is an invaluable depiction of the fight that is carried on daily by ordinary people simply trying to live what we accept to be a normal life.

Well cadanced and lyrical, the polished prose of Ian Johnson's Wild Grass propels the political non-fiction narrative genre to new heights. Each story's protagonists reflect Johnson's keen understanding of the human condition as well as his delicate sensitivity to the current political situation -- in the way one would expect of a Pulitzer Prize winning writer who was the Beijing Bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal. While one does not doubt for a second the material's authenticity, each story is beautifully crafted to better support the book's thesis concerning the changes in modern China that threaten Communist rule. Gripping honesty and raw emotion propel the reader forward and make learning more about courage, politics and China that much more delightful.

I just came back from a trip to China and was interested in learning more about the country but wasn't too interested in heavy academic writing. This book was good on both counts.
The author uses the stories of three people to explain the problems facing China. His point is that China is developing quickly economically but its poliitcal system is stuck in the past. I thought this was a pretty good analysis of China and it was brought home by the three people's stories. My favorite was about a young guy trying to save the historic center of Bejiing. I had seen on my trip how the old city was being torn down and had assumed that there wasn't much opposition to this. But I was surprised to read about how thousands of people have tried to sue the government to stop the city's destruction. I was also impressed by the scope of the writer's knowledge. Even though he focuss just on three people, he really covers a lot of ground and you end up learning a lot about Chinese history and culture.
If there's a reason I didn't give this five stars, it's that the book might be too pessimistic. The author says he isn't trying to predict China future but the picture he gives is of a society that's going to have inevitable conflicts with the government. When I was in China, people told me how their country had reformed its economy gradually. I wonder if this couldn't work for politics as well? Maybe the author underestimates this?
Overall, however, this is a very nice book, well-written and full of interesting facts and description of famous and remote parts of the country. I could recommend it to anyone planning a trip there or just interested in this fascinating country.

Books on China can often grow stale and out of date only a handful of years after they are written, given the pace of change in the Middle Kingdom. With this in mind I was slightly hesitant to pick up Johnson's book, even though it was a mere two years old! However, the poignant topics and character-development in each of these three stories ensures that Wild Grass will remain relevant up through the coming Olympics and beyond.

Although he won the Pulitzer for his reportage on Falun Gong, my favorite segment of the book was the section dealing with the destruction of Beijing...especially the ancient walled neighborhoods known as hutongs. These centuries-old dwelling, so difinitive of Chinese culture, and the city of Beijing, could easily have been upgraded and preserved as viable living spaces for Chinese citizens; however, nonexistent planning and massive corruption has destroyed all but a small percentage of these communities, and a way of life.

Johnson' narrative of this travesty reminded me of the overall destruction of the prairie grasses of the American Midwest, now "preserved" in nearly insignificant scattered acreages sprinkled across the landscape...a fraction of one percent of what once was. With the loss of the hutongs, Beijing has similarly lost it's identity.

I highly recommend Wild Grass for anyone interested in reading about this nation in a more focused, human level, rather than the numerous, awe inspired accounts that seem to concentrate China's staggering economies of scale.

This easily ranks as one of the best books on China that I've read in recent years. I have a particular interest in qigong and meditation, so I particularly liked the third of the three stories that make up the book. This is on the religious group Falun Gong and how it sprung out of the qigong movement of the 1980s and 1990s. It seems to met hat this is the first real history of this group, telling how it was founded and how it survived the government crackdown. The author won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Falun Gong and it's easily the best section of the book, with the story reading like a detective novel. The other chapters were interesting, too. One was on an uprising in the countryside and one was on efforts to save Beijing from destruction, which is bound to pick up as the 2008 Olympics approach. The basic message is that China is changing quickly, but the Communist Party is not, and this is leading to tensions between the general population and the government. The book, though, isn't "anti-China" and is quite even-handed, with none of the stories taking a simplistic view of things.
Overall I think this book was fun to read and informative. It's also probably the best Canadian book on China since Red China Blues by Jan Wong.

I'm glad I found this book. These three stories are very well written and, hence, smooth reading. Each includes information about the "big picture" (historical background, explanation about what's happening in the rest of the country, etc.), as well as the little details, such as clothing styles. These stories are about what to me are normal or understandable ebbs and flows of real human endeavors (involving politics, greed, stubbornness, altruism, learning to deal with the system, and so forth), making China much less the usual mysterious caricature.

This book uses three people to tell the story of today's China. Through a lawyer, a student and a small-town worker we get inside the problems in China's cities, towns and villages. The author tells the three individuals' tales like short stories but adds in enough background and other material so you end up understanding a lot about contemporary China as well.
The book was a real quick-read--I read through it in no time at all because I wanted to find out what happened to the three people. Would they succeed in challenging the government? Would they be defeated?
The author should also be commended for taking some personal risks in telling these stories. They seem to have involved a lot of travel to remote parts of China.
All in all, I can strongly recommend this for anyone who enjoys literary non-fiction in general and the topic of China more specifically.