Red China Blues

What I Read: Red China Blues, by Jan Wong. 405 pages. Doubleday, 1996.
Rating: 3/5.

Well!

That took a lot longer than I expected. When your bus driver starts to comment that you're taking a long time to finish a book, you know you're reading too slowly. I've become the Red China Blues girl to my public transportation officials, since I've boarded four buses each day for the last few weeks with this book in my hand. But my bus route has become the only time I have free to read, other than the times when my sweetheart of a boyfriend lets me cuddle up with him and a book on a date. (Hi, Nick. Have I told you lately you're fantastic?) Obviously I am a super fun girlfriend: such are the consequences of dating a book geek, I'm afraid.

So this book took me a few eons to finish. And now the looming question: Was It Worth It? Hmm. Not so much. And yes, it was. Clear as mud, right? The book starts off with Jan Wong, a Globe and Mail journalist, recounting her move from Montreal to China in 1972 to work and study under the Maoist Cultural Revolution. She moves with high hopes and expectations of a country she sees as being as close to perfection as possible. In reality, people live in fear of speaking honestly about the hardship and frustrations they face. Jan takes a long time to see behind the veil of Maoist rhetoric and idealism, even turning in a fellow student at Beijing University for unpatriotically wanting help to get out of China. This section should be interesting, and at times it is, but for the most part it drags, and I constantly wanted to shake her and shout "Looook! Your letters are read, you can't date who you want to, they keep pulling you out of class to work in factories, and everybody speaks in Maoist slogans instead of actually communicating. Do you see a problem here???" Eventually she does indeed see a problem, thank goodness, right about the point where I almost gave up on the book.

And then it gets goooooooood! She goes into reporting (actual reporting, as opposed to her initial attempt to get pro-Communism propaganda printed in the New York Times), and the book becomes suddenly fascinating. The twists and turns of Chinese history that Jan was witness to are well worth the read, and the tragedy of her account of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 is overwhelming. She writes beautifully and powerfully here, and her testimony will break your heart.

So, no, at first the book is not worth your time, and then suddenly yes, it is. After witnessing the tragedy of Tiananmen Square, she determines to examine more about the dark underside of China. She covers topics like the brutality of Chinese executions (the sentence even for copyright infringement is the death penalty), the failure of the justice system (police stole one of her car for their own use and rammed her replacement car while she was 8 months pregnant), and the tragedy of the booming trade in women (trafficking, incidentally, is only punished with 5 years, the same sentence for stealing two cows).

I won't be hanging on to this book, but I'm glad I read it. I could have just read a history textbook and saved myself the frustration of her being a naive ninny for the first half, but there is so much here that only a firsthand, personal account could touch on, and no history text could convey the emotion that makes sections of the book come alive.

Hopefully my next book doesn't take so long: I have four started in various cities right now, so we'll see which one gets done first. Thanks for your patience, and have a great and glorious day!

Happy reading,

Erin