![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pauraque posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
50books_pocThis was a book I picked at random off the Asian History shelf at the library, and as soon as I started reading I felt like I had waded in over my head. I had to stop and do some background reading to figure out exactly what the Cultural Revolution *was*. If you don't know, this book won't tell you -- it was written in Chinese for a Chinese audience, and it assumes that you know what the political situation was and who the major government players were. I did not, and I doubt a read-through of a few Wikipedia articles gave me the knowledge that a person should have to fully understand and assess this book.
That said, I read the book anyway. It was a disturbing and puzzling experience on several levels.
In the late 60s, Ma Bo heeds the call of Mao Zedong for young people to move out to the borders of China and engage in violent revolution against supposed capitalist elements of society. He has no qualms about this -- he believes fully in Mao's permanent revolution. He and his friends end up in Inner Mongolia with what is essentially a military unit under another name.
In these early chapters, the revolution consists of getting each other worked up with slogans and propaganda, and then beating the shit out of Mongolian herdowners -- enemies of the people, because they own a few cows. Much of this is difficult to read, especially the incident where the Ma Bo kills a herdowner's dog to "teach him a lesson", while the herdowner begs him not to do it. The author does not try to make himself look good; he's a thug who can't go a day without hurting someone or something just to show how tough he is.
Then he gets on the wrong person's bad side, and in the space of a few pages the full force of the Party comes down on his head, turning him from strutting, macho victimizer to suffering, spat-upon victim. He is imprisoned and interrogated. He is labeled a counterrevolutionary, and his so-called friends turn against him. Even his own mother won't listen to his side of the story. He's sentenced to labor reform, breaking rocks on a freezing mountainside. His punishment lasts for eight years, until shifting political tides change his fortunes once again and he is permitted to go home to Beijing.
I realize this is non-fiction, but as a story, it's problematic. Besides being hard to sympathize with (am I supposed to feel sorry for him when *his* dog is killed?), Ma Bo never seems to seriously question anything that happens to him. He never connects his horrible treatment of the people around him with the fact that they turn against him. He denies that he is a counterrevolutionary and throws himself into working as hard as he can to prove his loyalty and clear his name, but doesn't acknowledge the flawed policies that allowed it all to happen in the first place, nor his complicity in it.
Or at least, I didn't glean any acknowledgement of it. It's possible that there's irony in the book that I didn't see, or that he is limited in what he was allowed to publish. As I said, the book was originally published in China and was a best-seller there. As far as I know, the English translation doesn't add anything that didn't already clear Chinese censorship. As a reader, it was hard for me to forget this -- hard not to wonder whether he would have written more or differently if he had been allowed, or if he really bought into the system that much. He is sometimes critical of the Cultural Revolution, but as I understand it, that's the Party line in China right now anyway. After finishing the book I read a New York Times article about it by Liu Binyan that's quoted on the jacket. It provided a little insight into the background of the book's publication, but not as much as I was looking for.
The most effective parts of the book are those that don't comment on the politics at all, but focus on describing his experiences as a prisoner, as a laborer, as a person brought low. There is no romantic dignity pinned to it; it is harsh and graphic. He describes the awful beauty of the steppe with reverence, but never pulls punches talking about the brutality of the elements, the physical torments of hunger, cold, and disease, and the cruelty of people. (There are some disgusting scenes of cruelty to animals, which is not presented as acceptable or good, but may be a reason to avoid the book if you don't want to deal with that.)
Conversely, the least effective element is his obsession with a girl who is completely uninterested in him. He states clearly that he knows he was never in love with her, but was in love with the idea of her, a sort of Dulcinea to comfort him through his pain. This is not an uncommon or necessarily bad idea, but it just didn't work for me. It comes off as random and I couldn't empathize with it.
The translation is by Howard Goldblatt (who is white), and I can't comment on its accuracy. But as literary English, it's sometimes awkward and extremely full of cliches and stock phrases. He seems to be very well-regarded as a translator, so it may be that he was intentionally translating cliche into cliche, but for me it called way too much attention to the fact that it was a translation, and just didn't read well.
To sum up, I don't think I can really recommend this. It has a few strong points and memorable scenes, and it may read better to someone more familiar with Chinese politics, but by the end I felt the author had painted himself as a cold-hearted bastard who never learns anything from his terrible experiences. I hope that isn't the truth, but it's what I got from his book.
(eta tags: a: ma bo, chinese, china, cultural revolution, memoir)
That said, I read the book anyway. It was a disturbing and puzzling experience on several levels.
In the late 60s, Ma Bo heeds the call of Mao Zedong for young people to move out to the borders of China and engage in violent revolution against supposed capitalist elements of society. He has no qualms about this -- he believes fully in Mao's permanent revolution. He and his friends end up in Inner Mongolia with what is essentially a military unit under another name.
In these early chapters, the revolution consists of getting each other worked up with slogans and propaganda, and then beating the shit out of Mongolian herdowners -- enemies of the people, because they own a few cows. Much of this is difficult to read, especially the incident where the Ma Bo kills a herdowner's dog to "teach him a lesson", while the herdowner begs him not to do it. The author does not try to make himself look good; he's a thug who can't go a day without hurting someone or something just to show how tough he is.
Then he gets on the wrong person's bad side, and in the space of a few pages the full force of the Party comes down on his head, turning him from strutting, macho victimizer to suffering, spat-upon victim. He is imprisoned and interrogated. He is labeled a counterrevolutionary, and his so-called friends turn against him. Even his own mother won't listen to his side of the story. He's sentenced to labor reform, breaking rocks on a freezing mountainside. His punishment lasts for eight years, until shifting political tides change his fortunes once again and he is permitted to go home to Beijing.
I realize this is non-fiction, but as a story, it's problematic. Besides being hard to sympathize with (am I supposed to feel sorry for him when *his* dog is killed?), Ma Bo never seems to seriously question anything that happens to him. He never connects his horrible treatment of the people around him with the fact that they turn against him. He denies that he is a counterrevolutionary and throws himself into working as hard as he can to prove his loyalty and clear his name, but doesn't acknowledge the flawed policies that allowed it all to happen in the first place, nor his complicity in it.
Or at least, I didn't glean any acknowledgement of it. It's possible that there's irony in the book that I didn't see, or that he is limited in what he was allowed to publish. As I said, the book was originally published in China and was a best-seller there. As far as I know, the English translation doesn't add anything that didn't already clear Chinese censorship. As a reader, it was hard for me to forget this -- hard not to wonder whether he would have written more or differently if he had been allowed, or if he really bought into the system that much. He is sometimes critical of the Cultural Revolution, but as I understand it, that's the Party line in China right now anyway. After finishing the book I read a New York Times article about it by Liu Binyan that's quoted on the jacket. It provided a little insight into the background of the book's publication, but not as much as I was looking for.
The most effective parts of the book are those that don't comment on the politics at all, but focus on describing his experiences as a prisoner, as a laborer, as a person brought low. There is no romantic dignity pinned to it; it is harsh and graphic. He describes the awful beauty of the steppe with reverence, but never pulls punches talking about the brutality of the elements, the physical torments of hunger, cold, and disease, and the cruelty of people. (There are some disgusting scenes of cruelty to animals, which is not presented as acceptable or good, but may be a reason to avoid the book if you don't want to deal with that.)
Conversely, the least effective element is his obsession with a girl who is completely uninterested in him. He states clearly that he knows he was never in love with her, but was in love with the idea of her, a sort of Dulcinea to comfort him through his pain. This is not an uncommon or necessarily bad idea, but it just didn't work for me. It comes off as random and I couldn't empathize with it.
The translation is by Howard Goldblatt (who is white), and I can't comment on its accuracy. But as literary English, it's sometimes awkward and extremely full of cliches and stock phrases. He seems to be very well-regarded as a translator, so it may be that he was intentionally translating cliche into cliche, but for me it called way too much attention to the fact that it was a translation, and just didn't read well.
To sum up, I don't think I can really recommend this. It has a few strong points and memorable scenes, and it may read better to someone more familiar with Chinese politics, but by the end I felt the author had painted himself as a cold-hearted bastard who never learns anything from his terrible experiences. I hope that isn't the truth, but it's what I got from his book.
(eta tags: a: ma bo, chinese, china, cultural revolution, memoir)
