Subject: CND Books and Journals Review, June 6, 1993

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1993 11:39:49 +1000

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            |  \/___| |/    China News Digest     | |/__/  |/
             \_______/  (Books & Journals Review) |_______/

                              June 6, 1993

**CND B & J is part of CND-Global News Service. Broadcast once a week, it
attempts to bring to readers news and reviews related to Chinese arts and
literature, and articles of interest to supplement daily CND packages ***

No. Subject                                                      # of Lines
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Persecution of Political Prisoners in China --
   The Case of Liu Gang in 1993 ....................................... 222

2. Lives of Defiance in China's Democracy Movement -
   "Black Hands of Beijing"  by Black and Munro ........................ 93

3. Special Report Series - 6
   Living - Time for the "Me Generation"
   For millions of people under the age of 30, material success and
   self-fulfillment are the touchstones of the future ................. 129

4. "Farewell to My Concubine" directed by Chen Kaige ................... 41

5. Book Reviews --
   "The Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China" by Mackerras & Yorke
   "A Chinese Odyssey" by Ann Thurston
   "Chinese Roundabout: Essays in History and Culture" by J.D. Spence
   "The Struggle for Tiananmen:
    Anatomy of the 1989 Mass Movement" by Lin Nan
   "Toward a Democratic China" by Yan Jiaqi ........................... 117
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Editor's Note:  We welcome all CND readers to contribute to this column. If
                you encounter any China-related books  or journals that you
                would like to share with  other CND readers, please send in
                comments, newspaper reviews, journal articles, and excerpts
                etc to  [email-masked]   Thank you.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Persecution of Political Prisoners in China --
   The Case of Liu Gang in 1993 ....................................... 222
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by: Chen Jian ([email-masked])
Source: Human Rights in China
English Editor: Professor Perry Link

              Persecution of Political Prisoners in China:

                    The Case of Liu Gang in 1993

Liu Gang, who holds a Master's Degree in Physics from Beijing University,
began campaigning for democratic reform in China in 1985. A leader of the
student protests at Tiananmen in 1989, he was arrested after the massacre,
and in February 1991, sentenced to six years' imprisonment for
"counterrevolutionary crimes." He is being held in Lingyuan Prison in
Liaoning Province, where family members only rarely are allowed to see him.

Recently, friends of Liu Gang have been able to carry the following out of
China:

1. Liu Gang's "Open Letter to World Leaders," written from prison in March
1992 and revised in January 1993;

2. "My Urgent Appeal," Liu Gang's legal appeal for fair treatment; addressed
to Chinese authorities, the United Nations, and World opinion, also dated
January 1993;

3. A letter from Liu Gang's sister, Liu Ming, dated December 1992.

The three documents reveal the following details about Liu Gang's recent
condition:

-- He is held together with common criminals, who earn credit with prison
authorities by frequent beating and bullying of him and other political
prisoners.

-- Physical abuse includes punching, kicking, twisting the arms and legs,
choking, administering electric shock with electric batons, stomping on
abdomen, sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, and forcing victims to sit all
day on a wooden rail. Political prisoners are fed only a fraction of the
meager fare given to the common criminals.

-- Psychological tortures include frequent use of intimidation: "Next Year
this day could be the first anniversary of your death!"; "I'll break you
yet, you little counterrevolutionary criminal!"; "This is the dictatorship
of the proletariat, the meat grinder...we'll grind you slowly to death!"

-- Individual warders gain leverage over prisoners using by private threats. A
deputy section chief named Li Yang has said to Liu Gang several times that
"Any time I want, I can force you to walk near to the prison wall, shoot you
dead, and say you were trying to escape. No one can possibly know the truth.
Understand?"

-- Liu Gang and other political prisoners are asked to write confessions of
their "crimes," which are repeatedly rejected for not being "frank" enough.
Only when they write down verbatim what the warders direct them to write are
their statements judged to be sufficiently frank.

-- "Confessions" are extracted through beatings and torture. Although not
all warders beat the political prisoners, a warder's surest route to
promotion is to "break" a political prisoner. Ambitious young warders try to
prove their manhood by being especially vicious. Warders who show any
sympathy toward political prisoners, or who simply refrain from beating
them, are transferred elsewhere.

-- On days not occupied by organized persecution, Liu Gang and others
perform forced labor making match boxes. The work schedule is ten hours per
day, seven days a week. Beatings produce "volunteerism" to work overtime.

-- Liu Gang is denied access to books, newspapers, and television.

-- During the floods in South China in 1991, prison authorities directed the
common criminals to beat the political prisoners until they agreed to
"donate" 10 yuan of their scarce money to flood victims.

-- During his first two years in the Lingyuan Prison, Liu Gang was allowed
to bathe five times.

                      *              *              *

Despite the abuse he has endured, Liu Gang has successfully defended his
principles and integrity. He does make it a policy to supply ritual
"confessions" when under physical torture, in order to end the torture. But
other than that he has not compromised, and continues to oppose arbitrary
abuse of power through consistent appeal to law, principles of human rights,
and reason. He protests by fasting on days when he has heard that a foreign
dignitary is visiting the Chinese government. He also fasts on the following
schedule: January 1, April 5, May 4, June 4, July 1, August 1, and December
5.

On October 2, 1992, he began an extended fast to protest his continued
beatings and abuse. On October 10, Section Chief Li Yang and seven common
criminals force-fed him corn porridge through a tube. In doing so they told
him they were following instructions from Li Peng and reflecting "Premier
Li's revolutionary humanism." At the same time they threatened Liu Gang by
saying, "one complaint from your family about this and you die, they go
prison." From then until January 6, 1993, Liu Gang ate only on Wednesdays
and Sundays, and only about 500 grams each time.

In "My Urgent Appeal" (document 2, above), Liu Gang appeals to people in the
outside world:

        You must understand that all the of the police whose illegal
        behavior I am indicting in this document are the same ones who have
        direct control over my daily life. Any time they wish, they can
        visit me with their "electric shock treatment" or other kinds of
        "revolutionary humanism," including the grant or denial of life
        itself. ... All of them are well aware that I have resolved to go on
        charging them, and they use everything they can, including threats,
        intimidation, and beatings, to obstruct the process. They rage at
        me: "Who do you think you are? You think you can sue me?! I am a
        Communist! I wear the police uniform! I'll get promoted, and still
        be in charge of you!"

        So long as these bullies who beat and abuse political prisoners at
        will remain able to ignore the law with impunity, and even gain the
        appreciation of their superiors precisely because they have beaten
        us well, the law itself is trampled, human rights are insulted, and
        my own life is at risk. Section Chief Yang Baoxi recently told me
        that `I can have each one of the inmates in the Second Brigade [of
        the Lingyuan Prison] poke you once. That will be enough to poke you
        to death, and when it's done nobody will have to take
        responsibility. You wouldn't know who to sue if you could!'...

        I must use the law to protect myself; I muse use it to confront
        those people who pretend to obey the law but in fact trample it. My
        family must take up residence in Lingyuan. There is no other way
        out. I appeal to all people who uphold law, human rights, and human
        dignity to support the efforts of my family and me. I appeal to the
        public both inside and outside China to lend their voices to our
        cause. Brazen disregard for law and human rights must not be
        tolerated. Human life and dignity must not be cruelly crushed.

The Chinese government has pressured Liu Gang's family to denounce him, but
so far the family has been able to resist. Family members have remained
loyal to Liu Gang and have tried repeatedly to visit him in prison. On May
1, 1991, Liu Gang's brother Liu Yong visited him at Lingyuan Prison and
later wrote a letter to the central government protesting Liu Gang's
treatment. The response to this letter was that the prison authorities
stepped up their abuse of Liu Gang, and without giving a reason, turned Liu
Yong away on eight subsequent attempts to visit his brother. On May 1, 1992,
Liu Yong made a trip to the prison together with his sister and father.
After 10 hours of interrogation and waiting, the father and sister were
allowed to see Liu Gang briefly, but only after they were forced to accept
two conditions: 1)that they would disbelieve what Liu Gang told them; and
2)that they would not tell Liu Gang that Liu Yong, the banished brother, was
still waiting outside.

When the same three family members went to visit Liu Gang on November 1,
1992, they were again delayed while Liu Yong was instructed to write a
confession that his earlier letter to the central government about Liu
Gang's mistreatment had been "a lie." Several drafts by Liu Yong were
rejected. Finally the warders dictated to Liu Yong word-for-word what they
wanted him to write down. Liu Yong balked, and again was sent away without
having seen his brother.

                      *              *              *

In his "Open Letter to World Leaders" (document 1, above), Liu Gang rejects
the doctrine of "non-interference in internal affairs":

        If any person believes that a government (even a democratically
        elected one) has the right to abuse and oppress the citizens over
        whom it rules and the right to suppress any voice of opposition or
        dissent, and if that same person also believes that when people in
        other countries blame such a government for its acts of violence
        they are thereby `meddling in internal affairs of another country,'
        then that person doubtlessly also must take the view that if a
        father murders his son, or a husband mutilates his wife, no one has
        any right to `meddle in the internal affairs of another
        household'...

Liu Gang's "Open Letter" addresses a number of World leaders individually.
For example:

[To Pope Paul]:

        I understand that you (or perhaps it was your predecessor) were in
        the habit of praying for Mr. Walesa during his incarceration in
        Poland, and also that you traveled widely on his behalf until he was
        finally set free. Right now political prisoners in China, such as
        myself, live under conditions incalculably worse than those Mr.
        Walesa had to endure. You have every reason to pray for us. We
        wonder why you do not give us the support that you have given to Mr.
        Walesa and others.

[To President George Bush, still U.S. President
when Liu Gang wrote his letter]:

        You must have lived too long in China! Your acceptance of a double
        standard that sees feudalistic dictatorship as appropriate to the
        Chinese people but not (for example) to the people of Eastern
        Europe, your conspicuous lack of will and courage in comparison with
        Mr. Major, Mr. Mitterand, and even people in the Congress of your
        own government who express strong sympathy and responsibility, and
        your `take it easy, - let's keep things quiet' way of dealing with
        China's rulers -- all these suggest a strong and deep affinity with
        `Chinese- style' leadership! How can it be that your ability to
        `understand' the `difficulties' faced by tyrants so outstrips your
        ability sympathize with the people whom those same tyrants oppress?
        Do you not realize that such behavior, coming from the president of
        the world's leading democracy, sets back democracy throughout the
        world, and is irresponsible toward people everywhere?

[To Presidents Yeltsin and Walesa]:

        Certainly you, along with other people from Eastern Europe, should
        have a first-hand sense of the nature of our suffering. It warms my
        heart to know that your countries have been able to embark upon the
        road to freedom and democracy. At the same time, I believe that
        without the support of Western countries, your successes today would
        have been extremely difficult in coming. You might even have been
        like us, mired deep in difficulty, and maybe even struggling from
        the bowels of a prison. Now that you have destroyed tyranny in your
        own homelands, you have a solemn responsibility to give all-out
        support to the peoples who still live under the Soviet-style
        dictatorship that came to the world with `the gunfire of the October
        Revolution.'

                      *              *              *

When Liu Gang's sister last saw him, on April 19, 1993, he was in very poor
health. He was thin, his hair had begun to fall out, what remained of it had
turned one-third white, and his head was covered with psoriasis. He had a
prolapse of the anus that prevented him from sitting steadily. He reported
pain in his joints and an abnormal heartbeat.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Lives of Defiance in China's Democracy Movement -
   "Black Hands of Beijing"  by Black and Munro ........................ 93
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Review written and forwarded by: Gary Gach ([email-masked])

"Black Hands of Beijing" by George Black & Robin Munro New York:
John Wiley & Sons, $24.95

George Black and Robin Munro posit a moment in May 1989 where Zhao Ziyang
sees in the Movement an opportunity to make a comeback, and so reverses the
official line. They draw the comparison to Deng Xiaoping's reversing the
official line on the Tiananmen Incident of '76 in HIS comeback.

It is this kind of trope which fuels this latest Tiananmen tome.  More
accurately put, the authors take a few big steps back, to paint 1989 as an
overlay upon a bigger picture.

It is a correct perspective, and, furthermore, the authors' making links
through time harmonizes with the book's substantive theme -- people making
links in a closed society.

Substantively, the strategy consists in focussing on the lives of a few key
participants, which is, here, further correct insofar next to nothing has
been available in English on Chen Ziming and Wang Juntao, or Han Dongfang
and the Workers' Movement, with meaning for all to consider.

(Such a frame necessarily works provisionally when the authors are faced
with going beyond and outside it.  Thus their depiction of Zhao, above, is
necessarily conjecture:  we don't have Zhao's testimony; staunch supporters
will say he made no power play, but was merely discharging his duties.  And
when the book's principals retire from the fray for an intensive retreat,
the narration pulls away with them. Etc.  But this is obviously only
parenthetical, if not, worse, formalist.)

Readers unfamiliar with the story and those already briefed will both find
manifold rewards in this telling.  The book opens with Chen Ziming, awaiting
trial, following Tiananmen, and then flashes back to recount his biography.
His life story rivals fiction when he is released from his Cultural
Revolution  "re-education" to spend Qing Ming with his family, stumbles, and
participates, in the Tiananmen Event of '76, and is then sought by
authorities unaware he is safely hiding ... in prison!

Later, Chen Ziming with Wang Juntao essentially founded China's first
independent think tank, supported successfully on its publishing arm --
devoted to fostering an open civil society.  In '89, Fate fingered them out
to try to act as a bridge between their society and state -- mediating
between the core of millions of demonstrators and the Party.

Rather than silently observe, their conscience obligated them to act.
Initially, their stance was moderate, attempting to effectuate a honorable
retreat, a closure to the social upsurge.  Eventually, channels of
communication to the Party, "access," broke down, and the Movement
snowballed into a near-avalanche -- which left them in the camp of the
demonstrators, albeit still attempting a noble conclusion.

"Pushed onto the stage," as it were, they also heard the Workers' Movement
-- here given its first major voice in English.  From the perspective of the
workers, and the older intellectuals, the students were brave but as
dangerous as the Party they were challenging.

Again, to appreciate this position, the book interleaves its chronology with
background and comment, which, again is a correct approach.  Here, the key
document is neither the famous Editorial of 4/26, nor the Hunger Strike
declarations -- but, rather, a declaration by something calling itself the
Capital Joint Liaison Group.  Its importance seems to have been overshadowed
during Martial Law.

The book's extent in sheer pages gives it an epic dimension.  (In this
respect, it resembles Ann Thurston's "A Chinese Odyssey".)

And another way it's unlike any of the other titles currently on the shelves
is its continuing on after June 4.  (Overall, the book is in three parts:
"Reformers," "Tiananmen," and "Scapegoats.")  This latter portion dwells in
some detail upon the "Underground Railway" for escaping dissidents, upon the
prison system of New China, which no one could call latently democratic, and
on the trial with which the book opens.

George Black seemed to have served as writing coach, and done a top-notch
job. Robin Munro has been in the China net for over 20 years now, and so has
fine credentials for writing about the background.  He was in Beijing during
"the storm," and so has a lived perspective on those accelerating weeks.
(One of the last to leave the Square, he first came to public attention not
only contradicting a report of 4/6 machine gun fire there, but also saying
there was no massacre in there.)  As a Researcher for the Asian branch of
Human Rights Watch, Mr. Munro's credentials for the final section are also
in order.

The fabric from whence Tiananmen emerged will undoubtedly continue to be
sorted out throughout the remainder of the century, as well it should be.

The authors note that this movement hardly produced as much text, per se, as
the Democracy Wall:  yet, 4 years after, it has produced 50 primary titles
and another 50 secondary titles in English alone, which was anything but the
case with the Democracy Wall.  Perhaps BHB might mark a new turn in the
literature from Tiananmen.  Just as the Movement itself continually
consolidated, expanded, re-visioned -- might we see future textual byproduct
doing something of the same?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Special Report Series - 6
   Living - Time for the "Me Generation"
   For millions of people under the age of 30, material success and
   self-fulfillment are the touchstones of the future ................. 129
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by: Zuofeng Li
Source: Time 5/10/93
Written by: Sandra Burton, Shanghai

On a Friday night in the heart of old Shanghai, the crowd at J.J.'s is
working up a postsocialist sweat. About 1,000 young people have paid $4.50
to see and be seen at the city's most popular disco, named after a
well-known Hong Kong night spot.  Bathed in strobe lights, touched by laser
beams and surrounded by throbbing music, men in suits and ties gyrate on
multiple dance floors with fashionably dressed young women; at small tables
on the edges, newly affluent entrepreneurs sip drinks between calls on ever
present cellular phones. Bartenders who dropped out of university to earn
four times as much money as neurosurgeons dispense free job information
along with beer and cognac. "Let's get freedom!" blares an English-language
song from a wall of amplifiers - but the political message, if there is one,
is lost on the audience.

The young crowd at J.J.'s would look ordinary enough in Taipei. On the
mainland it stands for - and revels in - something unprecedented: personal
and professional liberation. Four years after the Beijing massacre,
political freedom remains out of the question, but young people with the
will and skill to take advantage of economic reform are freer than ever to
seek their fortune, their mate and their own identity. The headlong rush by
the most motivated of the under-30s to exploit the new liberty has caused
critics to brand them the "Me generation" - by implication, selfish
individualists. The description is unfair; it is more accurate to see them
as a generation without ideology, young people who have learned to believe
in nothing but themselves and the need to modernize their country - and who
see the market economy as the means to satisfy both.

China has 300 million people between the ages of 14 and 28.  They are called
the "fourth generation," to distinguish them from the preceding three
generations, which nourished revolutionaries and ideologues. They are the
children of relative affluence, unaffected by earlier spasms of war and
famine, too young to have served as Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution.
Many in fact cannot remember much of life before the onset of Deng's
reforms. "They are the luckiest generation," says Pu Chang-cheng, 40,
chairman of the Shaanxi Provincial Youth Federation in Xian. According to
Mou Sen, 30, the founder of Beijing's innovative Experimental Workshop for
Theatrical Training, people in their 20s have a mind-set totally different
from that of their predecessors: "Their ideas are influenced by rock 'n'
roll, TV and sports," he says.

The Me generation is characterized less by hostility toward the communist
regime than by indifference to it. "The government is all around us, but we
don't pay any attention," says Nie Zheng, 23, a Beijing artist and
photographer. "We are only interested in seizing the opportunity brought by
this economic change."

For Nie and others, that means forfeiting the so-called iron rice bowl - job
security and welfare benefits - that has bound Chinese workers to the
communist system. Nie, for example, does free-lance graphic-design work for
several Beijing ad agencies.  That pays enough to underwrite his tastes in
Japanese camera equipment, CDs and designer sunglasses, but also leaves him
time to read and paint. Sexual freedom is another matter. Explanation: "I
live in the same room as my grandmother."

Young people all over China have been swept up by what they call xia hai. It
literally means "plunging into the sea" and stands for risking everything by
leaving a secure, low-paying job assigned by the state and competing instead
for a position in private enterprise that pays more but offers no safety
net. "My parents want me to have some security as a teacher or a doctor,"
says Pang Rui, 18, a university-bound student at the Senior Middle School in
Xian. "But I want to be free to earn a lot of money from a job I like."

Classmate Meng Guangjun, 18, is also intrigued by the notion of risk taking.
"You can learn a lot about yourself," he says.  Another Xian student, Zhou
Shiwen, 19, who has picked up much of his knowledge about the outside world
from Hong Kong-based television broadcasts, sees things in a less serious
vein.  "People from foreign countries take risks like bungee jumping and
riding a motorcycle on the Great Wall," he says.

Increasingly, young Chinese want to emulate someone like Wang Guoqing, at 37
a relative oldster who quit his job at the Bank of China in Xian three years
ago to go into business for himself. His father, a factory worker, nearly
disowned him. "He thought banking was the best job anyone could have," says
Wang. Today father thinks differently: Wang has become a multimillionaire
retailer, restaurateur and real estate developer who wears Pierre Cardin
suits, Italian shoes and a $2,000 Swiss watch and is attended by similarly
dressed acolytes in their 20s and 30s.

"Everyone wants to be a boss," says Zhao Li, 25, a foreign-language graduate
from Wuhan who left her job as a government interpreter two years ago to
become assistant manager of a foreign-owned public relations company in
Beijing.  Her salary quintupled; and she moved from a crowded dormitory into
her own two-room apartment. Her responsibilities also multiplied: she found
herself handling a growing list of international clients and managing a
sizable local staff. "My parents came to Beijing and stayed in my flat. They
were happy to see that I can afford my own life," she says, "but they felt
sorry that I have little time to enjoy it." When they told Zhao that her
friends in Wuhan were all having children, she replied, "I have no time to
be married."

The comment, unthinkable in the old China, underlines the profound changes
in life-style and mores espoused by the me generation. With people marrying
at a later age, casual premarital sex has become more common: according to
one report, 20% of married couples admit to sexual experience before
marriage.  Also on the rise are extramarital sex (69% condone it) and
divorce (1.47 per 1,000 married couples). New stresses abound: it is not
uncommon for both spouses to take extra work to send a child to private
kindergarten or pay for night-school courses to prepare for a better job.

The urban young increasingly choose their spouses with but a nod to parental
approval - and are turning romance, courtship and beauty into big business.
"In the past, people were shy about telling others when they fell in love,
but now they want everyone to know," says Wang Zhiiong, a Guangzhou
researcher.  "This has led to the proliferation of flower shops, lovers'
coffeehouses, lovers' bars and lovers' seats in the cinema and karaoke
bars."

The basis for choosing a mate is also changing to some degree.  "Before the
reforms. whether the person was a Communist Party member was a major
consideration," says Wang. "Now people's tastes have changed to favor money,
professional ranking and appearance." A survey he took among young people in
Guangzhou showed that 80.2% rated sex appeal as the most important feature
of a loved one, followed by character (72.3%), appearance (72.2%) and income
(64%).

The new touchstones of material success and individual gratification have
brought something else in their wake: juvenile delinquency. Nationwide,
young people under 25. who account for less than 40% of the population,
committed 70% of crimes last year. Not all were poor. "Most of our inmates
come from families that are richer than mine," says Lu Sanji, the
superintendent ot the Guangdong Provincial Juvenile Reform School. "They
have plenty to eat, but they want more money for entertainment, so they
steal."  Yao Yubin, 16, is serving a one-year sentence for stealing a
motorbike. Says he wanted to "enjoy myself."

His attitude smacks of the ultra-individualism that hard-liners decry as the
inevitable consequence of economic freedom.  But those with no ideological
axe to grind take a more positive view. "Young people are beginning to think
for themselves about how to live in this society," says Jin Zhikun, a
retired director of Shanghai's Institute for youth Research. More and more
of them want to live at least part of their lives at J.J.'s.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. "Farewell to My Concubine" directed by Chen Kaige ................... 41
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by: XU Ming Yang
Source: Time 5/31/93
Review written by: Richard Corliss, Cannes

"Farewell to My Concubine" is a 170-minute, go-for-broke, Hollywood style
epic. Like the most recent film of this scope and sweep, Bernardo
Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor", it spans more than half a century of
Chinese history, from the warlord period through the Japanese occupation up
to and past the egregious humiliations of Cultural Revolution. Because the
main characters who reflect and endure these tumultuous times are performing
artists - two males stars of the Peking Opera, stalwart Duan Xiaolou (Zhang
Fengyi) and his gay stage partner (Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) - "Concubine"
conjures up dozens of American movies, such as "Singin' in the Rain" and
"For the Boys", in which popular entertainers put aside their differences
before putting on the greasepaint. There is, of course, a pretty woman (Gong
Li) in the middle, to stir one man's lust and another man's jealousy. There
is the elegance of stage art compromised by the humility of life beyond the
footlights. There is comradeship, and betrayal, and comradeship again.

All this might amount to no more than a song-and-dance soap opera if Chen
were not possessed of an artist's eye for gorgeous composition and a
showman's urge to keep the story hurtling along. From the early scenes of
basic training at an opera school, where the boy Dieyi is so enthralled by
his first glimpse at a Peking Opera performance that he loses control of his
bladder, to the end, when Dieyi's theatrical fatalism leads him to stage a
memorable last performance, "Concubine" throbs with the seductive power art
has over life. And because this is a movie about the glory and
competitiveness of performance, it is appropriate that the star turns by
Cheung, as the tormented homosexual, and Gong, as his bitter rival for
Xiaolou's loyalty, amount to a showdown for the title of most charismatic
presence on the Asian screen. Cheung wins, because this is his story and he
is equal to the doomed sensitivity of the role. Thanks in no small part to
him, "Concubine" has the sweep and pang of a novel that keeps you reading
till dawn, then lives in your dreams.

The big news came from the East, and not just from Campion and Chen. Hou
Hsiao-Hsien's "The Puppetmaster" (Taiwan) is a sere, poignant counterpart to
"Farewell to My Concubine": a Chinese puppeteer is forced to join an enemy
propaganda troupe during the Japanese occupation. Tian Zhuangzhuang's "The
Blue Kite" has been banned in China, and little wonder: it is a bold
anti-Party melodrama about one family's sufferings in the '50s and '60s.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Book Reviews --
   "The Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China" by Mackerras & Yorke
   "A Chinese Odyssey" by Ann Thurston
   "Chinese Roundabout: Essays in History and Culture" by J.D. Spence
   "The Struggle for Tiananmen:
    Anatomy of the 1989 Mass Movement" by Lin Nan
   "Toward a Democratic China" by Yan Jiaqi ........................... 117
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by: XU Ming Yang
Source: Books in Print

Book 1

"The Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China". By Colin Mackerras and
Amanda Yorke. Cambridge, 1991. 266p. bibliog. charts. index. tables.
hardcover $37.50 (0-521-38342-0)

This handbook, written by two Australian professors, provides basic
information on the People's Republic of China from 1949 through the spring
of 1990. The organization of the volume is unique. It begins with a
chronology of events of the twentieth century subdivided by broad subjects,
followed by short biographies of eminent contemporary figures (the majority
born before 1920), an annotated bibliography of in-print reference and
general books on the People's Republic, and a gazetteer of provinces and
their principal cities. The remaining chapters are essays on politics, the
economy, population, education, culture, and the ethnic minorities of China.
Although there are no photographs in the book, numerous tables, charts, and
graphs help to illustrate the text. For instance, three pie charts note the
age structure of the country in 1953, 1964, and 1982, and a table on
consumer goods notes that there are more than 5,000 bicycles per 10,000
population but only 225 refrigerators. An appendix with a list of important
acronyms, notes, and an index complete the volume.Criticisms of this source
include uneven indexing--Beethoven and Schubert are in the index since
People's Daily condemned them in 1974, but titles in the bibliography are
not indexed. Additional maps (there are only a few) would have helped
illustrate the enormity of the country.The Cambridge Encyclopedia of China
(1982) is well illustrated but is now out of date; a new edition is due this
year. Public, academic, and large high school libraries will find The
Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China a useful, up-to-date source on the
world's largest country.

Book 2

"A CHINESE ODYSSEY: The Life and Times of a Chinese Dissident" by Thurston,
Ann F. Scribners  (384 pp.) $24.95  Jan. 1992 ISBN:0-684-19219-5

A thorough and moving biography of a comparatively obscure Chinese dissenter
by the author of "Enemies of the People" (1987), a study of Mao's Cultural
Revolution. Thurston cobbles together the life of Ni Yuxian mainly through
interviews she conducted with the dissident before his death in 1988. Born
in 1945 in the Shanghai countryside, Ni was the son of a man accused of
"rightist" activity early on during the Communist rule. Denied a chance at
college prep school because of his father's taint, Ni developed a fiercely
critical intellect and a fearless stance toward Party injustice. As a child,
he rebelled against the Party Secretary in his school; as a young soldier,
he wrote a scathing 30-page letter to Mao criticizing his Great Leap Forward
policies that caused 20-30 million deaths between 1959 and 1961. Convinced
that Maoism was tyranny, Ni was emboldened by the Cultural Revolution,
encouraging fellow students at the Shanghai Maritime Academy to question
Maoist doctrine. His resistance earned him an apparently false rape charge
from the authorities and six months in a jailhouse, graphically depicted
here, after arrest by a propaganda team. In 1985, Ni was lionized in a
newspaper article by radical Chinese journalist Liu Binyan. Notorious and
marked by Communist officials, Ni was granted political exile and came to
N.Y.C., where he helped organize exiled Chinese dissidents, an experience
marred by accusations of financial improprieties. A vivid account flawed
only by occasional leaden diatribes against Communism and by "docudrama"
techniques such as invented dialogue. Still, a powerful study.

Book 3

"Chinese Roundabout: Essays in History and Culture". Spence, Jonathan D.
June 1992. 384p. index. Norton, $22.95 (0-393-03355-4).

Renowned Chinese scholar Spence presents a series of loosely interrelated
essays that provides an arresting overview of contemporary China. Spence's
offerings range in subject matter from the poignant experiences of Chinese
nationals in the West and Westerners in the Far East to the insidious
expansion of the opium industry. From the demise of the Ming dynasty in the
seventeenth century to the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square, specific
aspects of Chinese history and culture are introduced and analyzed by a
veteran Orientalist who displays a prodigious knowledge and respect for his
subject matter. Another valuable addition to cross-cultural understanding
and enlightenment from the author of the best-selling The Search for Modern
China. (Margaret Flanagan)

Book 4

"The Struggle for Tiananmen: Anatomy of the 1989 Mass Movement". Lin Nan
Greenwood. Dec. 1992. c.194p. permanent paper. bibliog. index. LC 92-15780.
ISBN 0-275-93656-2.  $45.

Numerous works on the 1989 Tiananmen massacre have been  published, but
sociologist Lin analyzes the democracy movement  from a different
perspective. Contextualizing the event, he  concentrates upon the "external
environment" that turned the  initial student protest into a mass movement.
In this slim book,  the author provides a clear and concise analysis of the
reforms  launched by Deng Xiaoping since 1980 and traces the economic,
social, and political consequences that resulted in discontent  among the
Chinese people. The massacre at Tiananmen is seen as a  social movement
involving multiple parties and various interest  groups interacting
dynamically with one another. Each chapter is succinctly and smoothly
delivered, but as a whole, the book  lacks focus because the author aims to
please a wide spectrum of readers. (Mark Meng, St. John's Univ. Lib., New
York)

Book 5

"Toward a Democratic China: The Intellectual Autobiography of Yan Jiaqi" Yan
Jiaqi. Tr. by David S. K. Hong and Denis C. Mair. 1992. 272p. index. Univ.
of Hawaii, $34.95 (0-8248-1484-3) ; paper, $15.95 (0-8248-1501-7)

Yan Jiaqi, the former director of the Political Science Institute at the
Chinese Academy of Social Science, documents the advancements and the
setbacks of the political reform movement in contemporary China. As manager
of his government's most progressive think tank, the author was involved in
the development and implementation of a series of democratic measures during
the 1980s. In addition to proposing term limitations for party officials,
the separation of party and state on many levels, and the creation of a
civil service system, Yan also served as an intellectual beacon for the
burgeoning student crusade. After the Tiananmen Square massacre, Yan Jiaqi
was forced into exile, organizing and directing an expatriate dissident
organization dedicated to the ideal of a more representative China. A series
of essays and interviews is also included. A compelling and informative
autobiography as well as a highly recommended addition to comprehensive
Chinese history and political science collections. (Margaret Flanagan)

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