A new look at der Chairman - and it ain’t too flattering.[quote]
Mao by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
Bad element
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday have revealed Mao as one of the 20th century’s greatest monsters, says Michael Yahuda
Saturday June 4, 2005, The Guardian
Mao: The Unknown Story
by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
832pp, Cape,
Wild Swans was very good. She was in the red guards and so has a unique perspective.
I thought Wild Swans was a good read, but judging from the reviews on her new book, she may have gone a bit far in many of her assertions about Mao. It is nice to see something that goes against the received wisdom about the man, though.
Er, who has ever written anything saying anything to the contrary? This is like writing a book and saying “Stalin wasn’t such a good chap you know”.
I’m confused. Do some people think Mao wasn’t simply a murderous egotist? I would like to read a book on Mao that says he was a great chap. Anybody know of one?
Is this book the one that says Mao was as evil, if not more so, than Hitler and Stalin?
This book’s getting a lot of attention. There seem to be prominent reviews of it appearing everywhere. I can’t wait to get hold of a copy and devour it.
In addition to the serious stuff, I hope it’ll have lots of titillating descriptions of how he sated his ravenous appetite for luscious young women.
I read in The New Emperors about how Mao would fill a swimming pool with naked xiaojies and take his daily swim while satisfying his appetites at the same time. Observers compared it to a rutting walrus.
Ok, so he had some redeeming qualities. That still doesn’t change the fact that he killed millions.
“Its good to be King”…Mel Brooks.
I saw Jung Chang on CNN this weekend. Interesting because I’ve never seen her before. It was on Talk Asia. They asked her why she didn’t have anything good to say about Mao. She said she looked for something good.
I believe I read in Jonathan Spence’s biography of Mao that he became a daddy when only 14 years old.
Another review of the Jung Chang & Jon Halliday book with some additional information in the review.
A long read. Perhaps of interest to a few folks here.
The material in this book, Mao: The Unknown Story, was very well researched. It is extensively endnoted and takes to completion many other authors’ lines of pursuit. The authors may be biased against Mao for personal reasons, but this motivation led them to dig deep for the facts about this crazy man.
I’ve heard the word polemic used several times in reference to this book.
Here’s a snippet from a negative review by Frank McLynn in The Independant:
[quote]On the Korean war the authors revive the old myth about “hordes” of Chinese swamping the American army and defeating them by sheer weight of numbers, which was simply propaganda put out by the Pentagon, embarrassed by the poor showing of the US Marine Corps. And who is their historical source for the Chinese “human waves”? Michael Caine. Come again? Yes, I do mean that Michael Caine, the movie actor, whose personal memories of the Korean War are given the status of holy writ.
But why bother with the tiresome discipline of historical research when you can make wild assertions buttressed by unknown or suspect oral sources that are (in the authors’ recurrent mantra) “little known today”. Maybe that is their gloss on Caine’s “not a lot of people know that”.
If you can believe that Chou-en-lai, the master diplomat who wowed everyone from Kissinger to Orson Welles, really was a hypermasochistic craven nonentity who played lickspittle and toady to Mao for no apparent reason (at least the authors do not suggest one), or are interested in the number of minor actresses Mao bedded, this book has a certain entertainment value. But it is neither serious history nor serious biography.[/quote]
HG
Another interesting review here. Pro: through a populist style, the book brings to a wide, non-specialist audience the well known fact that Mao was a bastard. Con: it’s a long way short of a significantly contribution to the literature - nothing new here for those who take even a passing interest in contemporary Chinese history.
The book is an interesting read, especially when it is talking about the power struggles within the communist elite. Still, one has to wonder where she got all the “never published before behind the scenes information” from. Only time will tell what that book is worth, I guess.
Well, she claims her husband for one. He’s a reader of Russian and supposedly got access to Russian archives.
HG
Er, where did my post go? Did anyone see it? Maybe it never made it? It included a link to Andre Nathan’s review in the LRB. Anyone seen it? Should I file a missing post report?
That’s right! Where did it go? That was a great review. I had it in mind when I linked that review in the Independant, but I was sure the one I read had more teeth, as it were.
Here’s that link: Jade and Plastic. By Andrew Nathan
Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
Thanks for the link Guangtou, another good review. Though I’m still wondering about the final bit:
[quote]Clearly, these few brief remarks show that far more might be said about this book and its merits as history. It would be possible to write a critical reflection three times as long without exhausting the scope for commentary. Any such commentary, however, would have to come back to this: that the regime which still rules in China identifies itself with Mao Zedong and is founded on a mountain of Chinese bones. There is something acutely disturbing about the fact that it has been able to present itself, and continues to present itself, as a
There are two important things about this book:
Its main idea, that Mao was a bastard, has been commonly accepted for over thirty years by people who read about China;
The purpose of this book is to earn money on the back of the success of Wild Swans from readers who know only that Mao was a bad man who ruled China, and not to make any serious contribution to the world’s knowledge of Mao Zedong.
Forty-seven thousand million billion books have been written about Mao. I’ve read three of them, and based on the comments by Sinologists I’ve heard of and whose opinions I respect, I’ll not bother reading this new one, so my comments can’t of course relate to the book’s content. But I was just surprised that news Mao was a mad murdering hedonist could be news to anyone. Especially after the publication of Li Zhisui’s book which I hitherto thought had a wide readership outside the cliquey world of Sinology. It is a very readable book and you don’t have to able to recognise Lin Biao’s calligraphy from 1,000 paces with one eye closed to understand it, unlike some other books on China. Mao was an emperor, and that’s what they’re like. Perhaps he was the last one. I’m still waiting for a book on Jiang Zemin by his doctor to see if he spent his twilight years balls-deep in the Sichuan People’s Dance Troupe, but somehow I doubt it. I think Mao really was the Last Emperor, which makes it all the more interesting.
Li Zhisui’s The Private Life of Chariman Mao and Ross Terril’s Madame Mao are essential reading for anyone trying to learn about Chairman Mao. In fact I recommend reading Li Zhisui’s book first and then Terril’s . If you do you will have read two books about the two most interesting and fascinatingly horrible figures in communist China’s history. And I would also like to once again plug Jenner’s The Tyranny of History as it is brilliant although it does assume you know a bit of Chinese history as it’s a commentary not a textbook.
I love Chinese history. 5,000 years of murdering, raping, pillaging and back-stabbing and utter mad chaos with drugs and funny haircuts. What more could you want? (I had to study Russian history at school! Don’t ask!)
Here’s another commentary on the book.