Yet Another China Correspondent

A few entries back I believe I mentioned that I was stuffing my head with some of the unread China titles on my shelf.  There are always a few I haven’t gotten to.  This year I’d tried to read as much as I could about Israel and Egypt and Palestine in preparation for a potential visit, which remains, at this late date, a definite maybe.  Starting a few weeks back I switched gears to read Lin Yu Tang and Carl Crow to savor how the Chinese and the China-hands made sense of Cathay at that particular point in its evolution. 

A few month’s back my wife had introduced me to her friend Wu Qi and her husband, the British sinologist, William Lindsay.  We had a lovely day of tea and scones at their house not far from our own and he’d graciously presented me with a signed copy of his work “The Great Wall in Fifty Objects.”  I wasn’t sure when I’d ever read it but I was fairly certain it would be substantive and well written.  I pulled it off the shelf after finishing Evan Osnos “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China” and gobbled it down in a day and indeed, it was a great read. 

Flying down to Shanghai the other day, just before starting my class I read Yan Linke’s novel, “The Dream of Ding Village,” which I believe I wrote about at the time.  And then, figured the book I’d keep in the bathroom in my hotel room all week, would be “China Road” by the NPR correspondent Rob Gifford.  There is really no reason for me to read yet another book by yet another China correspondent at the end of their tenure, about “the new” China especially a work that is already twelve years old.  But I’d gotten it as the person who originally written the syllabus for my course, which I completely rewrote, had had it on there.

These correspondent wrap-up books seem to age very, very fast.  Even if the writer is funny or trenchant, which Mr. Gifford is not, and even if the writer has good Chinese and gets outside the cities, which Mr. Gifford does, China’s remarkable pace of innovation leaves turns works like these into dated, period pieces very quickly.  Still, it is interesting if somewhat formulaic to consider how someone else reckons with their China experience, having similar epiphanies about a time and place that no longer exists. 

I finished it off this morning and was glad to reach the end of Route 312 and the end of Mr. Gifford’s China assignment.  Sometimes, we just need to get a book done.  I’m started in on “The Third Body Problem” by Cixin Liu.  It too has been on the shelf for most of the year and a number of friends have mentioned enjoying it or not.  With this, a seventh title, I think I will likely be done with my class and done with this China segue.  I’ve made a good dent in the China backlog up on the shelf, though there are always more up there waiting.

Wednesday, 5/29/19