Books to read

When we first arrived in China I set about reading an old book called 'Two Innocents in China' by Jacques Hebert and Pierre Trudeau. It definitely is a dated book but I noted in my Book Journal (kindly given by Guy and Jacqueline), that I found it "well written, entertaining and easy to read and it put some historic facts in place for me" (a subject I am definitely a duffer at). It gave me a brief insight into the China on display in the 1960s and the authors' thoughts at the end of the book seemed to put it all into perspective. When I had finished I felt that although the regimented and controlled environment was antipathetic to our day to day existence in NA, I was impressed that any one person could convince a nation to change so radically, and felt that Mao had done a pretty good job of harnessing China's potential and turning China around ready to become a world power. The end perhaps justified the means. How naive I was!

I then read a book recommended by my school friend, Mary, called 'The Wild Swans' by Jung Chang relating the lives of three generations of women, her grandmother, her mother and herself and what a tale of change and tragedy it turned out to be taking the reader from the early 1900s (although she refers to the late 1800s too) to the 1970s.
Although not all that well written and, as I told other friends who also recommended it, I found the author disingenuous, it is a fascinating but sad story, even a tragedy of culture, tradition, history and lives lost. It covers a little of the bourgeoisie, the Kuomintang and Mao and the Cultural Revolution. I felt, when finished, that she had explained much of the Chinese behaviour that I am seeing here now, some of which I had found difficult. This is a book full of history from a woman's perspective, from the bound feet to the freedom to think and it's well worth a read if you have the time.