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Scott Tong

A Village with My Name: A Family History of China's Opening to the World Hardcover – November 17, 2017

by Scott Tong (Author)

4.6 114 ratings

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When journalist Scott Tong moved to Shanghai, his assignment was to start the first full-time China bureau for “Marketplace,” the daily business and economics program on public radio stations across the United States. But for Tong the move became much more—it offered the opportunity to reconnect with members of his extended family who had remained in China after his parents fled the communists six decades prior. By uncovering the stories of his family’s history, Tong discovered a new way to understand the defining moments of modern China and its long, interrupted quest to go global.

A Village with My Name offers a unique perspective on the transitions in China through the eyes of regular people who have witnessed such epochal events as the toppling of the Qing monarchy, Japan’s occupation during World War II, exile of political prisoners to forced labor camps, mass death and famine during the Great Leap Forward, market reforms under Deng Xiaoping, and the dawn of the One Child Policy. Tong’s story focuses on five members of his family, who each offer a specific window on a changing country: a rare American-educated girl born in the closing days of the Qing Dynasty, a pioneer exchange student, an abandoned toddler from World War II who later rides the wave of China’s global export boom, a young professional climbing the ladder at a multinational company, and an orphan (the author’s daughter) adopted in the middle of a baby-selling scandal fueled by foreign money. Through their stories, Tong shows us China anew, visiting former prison labor camps on the Tibetan plateau and rural outposts along the Yangtze, exploring the Shanghai of the 1930s, and touring factories across the mainland.

With curiosity and sensitivity, Tong explores the moments that have shaped China and its people, offering a compelling and deeply personal take on how China became what it is today.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of Chicago Press
Publication date

November 17, 2017
Dimensions

6 x 1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

022633886X
ISBN-13

978-0226338866
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"He uses a radio journalist’s sense for sound and place to create a vivid and readable account. . . . The book's focus on ordinary people makes it refreshingly accessible."
― Financial Times

"Immensely readable. . . . Readers of this book will find their views of China deepened and expanded, and will discover that they can never look on the China in the Western news headlines the same way again."
― Christian Science Monitor

"This personal narrative could easily become one of bitterness; instead, Tong tells his story with humor, a little snark, lots of love, and a determination to show the dignity of his people and others he meets along the way. A charming book about a second-generation American's search for his family (past and present) and for himself in contemporary China. Highly recommended, especially for those interested in Chinese history and family journeys.:
― Library Journal, starred review

"A solid exploration of China past and present in which the author climbs ‘a punishing mountain of history with [his] intergenerational team." ― Kirkus Reviews

“This ambitious work, part social and political history and part personal story, doesn’t attempt to cover all the members of Tong's family. Tong instead concentrates on a few representative relatives who reveal particular facets of the vast changes in China. . . . Tong clearly communicates the complexity of Chinese life and effectively integrates his own story into a much larger one."
― Booklist

"In this, his first book, Scott Tong does much to revive the stocks of two genres that have been looking a bit tired lately: China reportage and China memoir. A former correspondent for the US public radio series Marketplace, he argues that the official narrative of Chinese history is frustratingly incomplete, and his gentle and original fusing of the two genres backs up his claims."
― Inside Story

"A remarkable achievement: the writer has overcome his own family’s reluctance to speak about a past punctuated by heart-rending episodes to tell the story of China’s re-emergence through their lives. . . . [A] gem . . . more than just a trip through the ancestral archives." ― Post Magazine

"An account of China's treasured historical biography [that] helps answer the question, 'Where did today's China really come from?' . . . Tong succeeds in sharing the raw spirit of China’s people through a period of history that is in many ways better left alone. He captures the hopes, joys, sufferings, losses, fears, present realities, hardships, and dreams of the Chinese people. . . .Like a warm blanket reminding me of good times gone by . . . . Tong gracefully shares the pain of China's history through his family's ancestral past. . . . He takes the secretly packaged and hidden histories of his family and reworks them into this beautiful story filled with both good and bad endings in order to leave a legacy; a legacy for all Chinese families who understand the disconnect between China's past and its current modern age." ― China Source

"One of the best books on China in a decade. Tong displays the creative zeal of a world-class investigative reporter, but also the huge heart and family ties of a great-grandson of old China. Tong's family stories are the lived history of China--where exile, starvation and shame alternated with escape, riches, and promise. This is a spellbinding and personal portrait by a remarkably gifted storyteller." -- Pietra Rivoli, author of Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy

“Tong uses a reporter's skills and dedication to track down his family’s own story, traveling to such unfamiliar places as a desolate prison camp in remote northeastern China and a child trafficker’s front room. The result is a vivid illustration of the high price paid by his relatives for their links with the West. Compulsively readable, this book traces China’s long and difficult relationship with the outside world through the extraordinary journey of a single family.”
-- Louisa Lim, author of The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited

“A Village with My Name is a wonderful unearthing of long-forgotten but ever-important ties between America and China. It is a great reminder that our relations with China are about more than politics and have stretched farther back than many of us would realize. Besides, it’s a great read!”
-- John Pomfret, author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, from 1776 to the Present

"A Village With My Name is a rich, subtle, closely observed study of the power of memory (and forgetting) to shape both a family and a nation. Tong's multigenerational tale of his remarkable clan captures all the contradictions of a China in world-changing metamorphosis." -- Eric Liu, author of A Chinaman’s Chance: One Family’s Journey and the Chinese American Dream

“In this combination of memoir, genealogy, history, and current affairs reporting, Tong uses his discovery of his family’s past in mainland China to put many of China’s most monumental historical events into a human scale. His attempts to clarify or uncover his family history, and the disputes, controversies, and missteps he encounters along the way will be familiar to anyone who has spent time trying to understand how a family became the way it is. Here the story is even more interesting because the story of the Tongs is complicated by the political history of China, which remains very present in their lives.” -- James Carter, coauthor of Forging the Modern World: A History

About the Author

Scott Tong is a correspondent for the American Public Media program “Marketplace,” with a focus on energy, environment, resources, climate, supply chain, and the global economy. He is former China bureau chief. Tong has reported from more than a dozen countries.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; 1st edition (November 17, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 022633886X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226338866
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.06 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,062,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,536 in Asian & Asian Americans Biographies
- #2,671 in Japanese History (Books)
- #3,779 in Chinese History (Books)

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4.6 114 ratings

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Don Darby

Scott Tong has an amazing ability to combine a time in China with facts

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2017

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A Village with My Name: 5 stars is not enough! Scott Tong has an amazing ability to combine a time in China with facts, feelings and word pictures to give readers deep appreciation for honor and hardship, for acceptance for what is, and for hope of what might come. He presents real people in his family, many of whom are outside the mainstream of daily living in the remote Tong village to share journeys necessitated by political and personal challenges. He eloquently describes the profound impact of their impossibly difficult decisions made permanent over time.
The roads through China, the shared memories which give windows of understanding and appreciation of a very difficult voyage through life creates a vibrant mural of Chinese daily living that has been a mystery hidden for decades.
Mr. Tong moves through the stories of family members and acquaintances with agile ease and connected interest. He moves through time and place with an extraordinary ability to tell a well-blended detailed story of five generations of family history. He tells of his great grandfather Tong Zhenyong who went to Japan and returned to save the Tong villagers during the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930’s. The story continues with Grandfather Tong Tong who sided with the Kuomintang and escaped to Taiwan. The family he left behind was ostracized and humiliated during the rise of the Communist government. He tells of a progressive grandmother, Mildred Zhao, who ran a primary school in Shanghai, who along with her husband Carleton Sun was considered to be too Western. She escaped to Hong Kong with her daughter (Mr. Tong’s mother), and her husband, Carleton was arrested as a counter-revolutionary and sentenced to Mao’s gulag—a hidden national secret which Mr. Tong describes in detail. His grandfather died there. Family members of so-called enemies of the state were shamed and punished as well as for the departures of Grandfather Tong Tong who escaped on an overcrowded boat to Taiwan with his son (Mr. Tong’s father). The story ends with a commentary of the adoption of the author’s daughter from an orphanage that he later learned was into baby trafficking.
Scott Tong’s stories reveal the hurt and shame felt by those on the edge—those who stayed behind, those who left for America, as well as those with unfulfilled dreams who sought to leave, but were thwarted, particularly his grandmother Mildred. Family members who remained in China were blamed and persecuted for the efforts of their family members. The pain was felt by all, many of whom still do not want to relive the anguish of the past. The story ends with an optimism for the future with the story of the author’s daughter.
Mr. Tong relates his story with insights into Chinese language and cultural traditions giving us peeks into daily living while China is transforming itself into a modern culture. It is a culture in which there is opportunity now for woman and young people who while trying to transcend the restrictions and secrets of the past, face an inexplicable future in a China that continues to define and redefine itself as it becomes a major force in the Twenty First Century.

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fctung

A family story intertwined with 20th century China

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2017

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“This story has to be told in a real way --- setbacks, infidelity, arrests, labor camps --- to humanize what so many people have overcome. It has to be real.” With this determination, Scott Tong has told his readers a captivating and touching story of his family through the stores of five generations, both his paternal and maternal sides, covering a period of about one and a quarter century from the late 19th century to the beginning of 21st century. More than a family story, what Scott Tong has painted is also a sketch of China and Chinese people in general during this period, with some of his family members as the “actors” of many interconnected episodes. In less than 300 pages one would read a simplified, yet encompassing, history of an ill-fated and weak China’s struggle to restore itself as told or experienced by some members of Scott Tong’s family. It is a family story as well as a national history.

The story begins with Scott Tong’s paternal great-grandfather who joins, at the turn of the 20th century, the wave of Chinese young people who are determined to learn from the West or its proxy - Japan the new knowledge to restore China. His grandparents live the period of resistance against the Japanese aggression and the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. The individual decisions made by the grandparents during this turbulent times give rise to very different consequences on their lives and their children. Each of them typifies the fate of a rather representative segment of the intellectuals at that time. Scott Tong’s parents transplant themselves in American and have led successful careers and comfortable lives. Scott Tong, the relentless protagonist of family root searching, born and raised in America, spends a few years in China as a foreign correspondent. His adoption of a Chinese girl is a story of China’s one-child policy from the specific angle of adopting Chinese baby girls, mostly by American families.

Scott Tong, a noted reporter of Marketplace, has written the book with his journalistic skills and perspectives. His story telling is insightful, objective, yet entertaining, and approachable. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand and appreciate what China, now the second largest economy in the world, has gone through in the last and quarter century; it is a story told by the personal experiences of some of Scott Tong’s family members.

7 people found this helpful

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Brenda Jones

Excellent book and very educational.

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2023

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Excellent book and very educational. I nlearned a lot.

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M1

about more than I thought

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2022

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The second part of the title gives more of an idea about the book than the first. As a Chinese American, the first part of the title was intriguing, but I learned a lot, as did the author, about how China's political history affected his ability to learn about his family, and how it may/will affect the real history of people in China as the truth is suppressed and may disappear. I remember hearing hints of the Japanese invasion from my parents and this book confirms those stories. Well worth reading.

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