4 comments about Women Poets of China (New Directions Paperbook, 528).

1. The editors made a good try to translate the poems, but the result makes me laugh!
   
   They can translate the meanings but they can't keep the feelings, formats, sounds, favors, and metaphors.
   
   This book can fool people who can't read Chinese. Chinese is my first language, this book can't fool me!
   
   If you are a professor or teacher, please stop showing off your "good taste" by forcing your student to read this piece of stupid translation. You need to learn Chinese to read real Chinese poem.



2. Probably my favorite of the asian poetry books that I've read. Thanks for the compilation, Kenneth.



3. This collection was a huge surprise. Unlike the steryo type of what women in China was like, subservient to husbands they are forced to marry, with little thoughts and feelings for themselves.

   These women poets starting from 1644-1911, shout out thier love of thier partners, discuss drinking, sex, lust, romance, infactutation and even loving other women.

   The metaphors are soft and light at the first reading, yet if you look deeper you realise some of the subjects are far from the softness the poetry is conveyed in.

   A good histrical text on Chinese Women and a good read. As the previous reviewer said, buy two and give one to a friend.




4. An exciting selection of poems by known and previously unknown women poets. Ling Chung's scholarship and sensitivity gave the late great Kenneth Rexroth the insight and inspiration to outdo himself here. Buy two copies and give one to a friend.

No comments about Birdless Summer (China : Autobiography, History, Book 3).

No comments about Hunger Trilogy.

5 comments about The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao's Personal Physician ('Mao ze dong si ren yi sheng hui yi lu', in traditional Chinese, NOT in English).

1. A real, in depth account of Mao from the view of his personal physician. I don't think there is any other point of view that can capture this leader's horrendous acts and thought process.



2. An urbane bourgeois doctor meets and works for a brutal egotistic self-doubting country boy turned dictator, with hilarious results. Part of the fun of reading this is who you are rooting for. Personally I found the good doctor rather tiresome, he is clearly a lesser man than Mao (although he obviously didn't think so) throughout the book. However Mao's weaknesses - vanity, covetousness, adultery (in the extreme), heck just paste in all the seven sins - also become tiresome after the first exhilaration of meeting this gangster turned dictator. In fact Mao becomes a bit like Tony Soprano - you stop rooting for him after you realise that this kind of life is what it is - unhealthy and harmful to others. Mao was a powerful man, but not a great one, as he did very little to help his people - in fact millions suffered and died under his rule - but he does have the legacy of founding the modern China that right now is on the rise.



3. 
   This doctor could have had a comfortable and fulfilling life but chose to join the spirit of the new China. He, like so many idealistic youth, went back to China (and Russia) to join the "new society" only to be buried in a world created by the revolutionaries in whom they had put their trust.
   
   Dr. Li's suffering was made meaningful in his writing this book. This may be the world's first up close portrait of a national dictator/cult leader. Some of the things that were most striking to me are:
   
   · First, when Dr. Li accompanies Mao to his hometown, Mao tells him how his father, a minor but comfortable landowner, beat him and his brothers so badly that he would run away. Recently I had read how Fidel Castro, was humiliated by living in the workers' homes on the property where his father lived in the "big house" with his legal wife and family. Years ago I had read of Stalin's abuse at the hand of his stepfather. These bright, talented and unwanted sons turned their anger, resentment and hostility on millions of victims.
   
   · Second is that revolutionary warriors had no time for education and their resentment for those that had it ran deep. The facts of the Great Leap Forward imply ignorance, but Dr. Li defines the know-it-all way it got started, grew, got implemented and institutionalized. With science meaningless, Mao's medical treatment was a political decision, and the doctor knew he would suffer for the patient's eventual death.
   
   · Third is the no-win situation everyone was in. The people setting the dynamics had not only the education of third graders, they had the emotional maturity of them too. Slights and unwanted facts create temper tantrums and grudges lethal to the inhabitants of Zhongnanhai and disastrous for China.
   
   · Fourth, was how Dr. Li was expected to know about everything from water quality, to the poisons in food to dentistry and given no opportunities for professional development. When convenient this knowledge was used, but never applauded.
   
   · It's interesting how Mao maintained power even as he lost his eyesight and speech. I'd be interested in some views why/how this happened.
   
   · It's amazing that this book is free of acrimony and sensationalism. For all his troubles Dr. Li was banished to the countryside 3 times and often intentionally separated from his family.
   
   It must have been both painful and cathartic to write this book. I'm curious how his sons got to the US.
   
   This is a must read for anyone interested in 20th century China.



4. It is difficult to find a relatively objective portrait of Mao, and Dr. Li provides one of the most direct and honest descriptions of the Chairman that I have been able to find. His knowledge of the details of the Chairman's political conflicts is often superficial or naive, but this stems from Dr. Li's desire to stay out of the dangerous, entangling politics that surrounded Mao. The real value of the book is in Dr. Li's observations and insights into Mao's personality and how the political struggles surrounding Mao resulted in disastrous national policies.



5. As an off and on student of modern Chinese History and with a decided leaning toward the benefits of socalism for China I was bewildered by Li Zhisui's book. It seems to me that this is either an elaboratly deceptive historical piece or -- very close to reality.

No comments about Their Hidden Agenda: The Story of a Chinese-American FBI Agent.

1 comments about The Last Confucian: Liang Shu-ming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity (Center for Chinese Studies, UC Berkeley).

1. Interesting book of a man who attempted to build a socialist Chinese state instead of a despotic one. Caught in the middle of warlords and would-be emperors, however, his project never really had a chance of success, but serves as a sad illustration of what could have been.
   
   Also, Guy Alitto, the author, looks like some kind of cross between the Pringles guy and the Monopoly guy.

No comments about Religion and Biography in China and Tibet.

No comments about Footprints in the Snow: The Autobiography of a Chinese Buddhist Monk.

No comments about Chinese for Christ: Futher missionary advance in the Far East.

1 comments about Anna Chennault: Informal Diplomacy and Asian Relations (Biographies in American Foreign Policy, No. 8).

1. Anna Chennault played a role in the post World War II Republican party. As the society widow of a war hero, she played the party host for up and coming Republicans in Washington D.C.'s society. She influenced Republican strategy to the Asia and especially the ROC and PRC. This hard line approach dictated policy which resulted in the cold war in Asia.
   Even though China was Communist, her views influenced how the U.S. dealt in this crucial area of the Cold War. I am not sure this is a good thing, since Anna was from a prominent Peking family oppossed to the Communists.
   
   One thing this book explains is the October surprise that Anna influenced. The RSV was against any peace overtures to DRVN, and so Anna's influence may have killed an earlier deal in Vietnam, and got RN elected President. This chapter makes it clear on what actually happened and does show RN influenced American policy before the 1968 election.
   
   This book is a thesis for the author's PhD. Even though I don't like reading a thesis, this book explains well Anna's influence in the American political system. I think it explains well the subject's influence on American policy-right or wrong.