Chinese Shadows, by Simon Leys & In the People's Republic, by Orville Schell
Calkins, Wendell N.
"Chinese Shadows, by Simon Leys & In the People's Republic, by Orville Schell" most dramatic fashion possible by the results of Israel's 1977 elections, which cast the Labour Party from power and put in its place the Likud coalition. One is tempted to excuse Mr. Sevela on the...
...And questions to officials about personal matters like sex and marriage are deflected, answered in implausible ways, or ignored altogether...
...In 1952, most Americans regarded Truman as a failure...
...The description of Chou En-lai's state banquets is priceless...
...Finally, while claiming to be simply painting a few shadows, Leys likes the company of George Orwell and Lu Hsim (he quotes both of them frequently) and appears to harbor the ambition of becoming the third member of a great prophetic trinity...
...His critics assumed that the United States could be a successful nation and accomplish all that it desired, if only it were led by a great man...
...Although he nowhere brags about it, it is obvious that he could communicate adequately with all of the Chinese people he met, even though they might talk with, say, the heavy accent of a Shansi peasant...
...He maintained that he had learned the lessons of history and avoided the mistakes of the past, and thus had saved mankind from World War III, at least for the time being...
...Or would you prefer the British Embassy and Peter Sellers...
...BOOK REVIEW Chinese Shadows Simon Leys / Viking / $10.00 In the People's Republic Orville Schell / Random House / $8.95 Wendell N. Calkins These two books represent very dif- ferent attitudes towards China in the 1970s, the one (as its title suggests) dark and sardonic and bitter, the other bright, jovial, and occasionally a bit naive...
...Yet they do not represent opposite poles, for Orville Schell rather frequently criticizes what he observes, while Simon Leys punctuates his acerbic vignettes with professions of love for the Chinese "people" and for the "Revolution" that is being subverted by bureaucratic stupidity...
...Is not the "barefoot doctor," rather than the skilled brain surgeon, the typical medical figure in China...
...To order these books, or for a copy of our catalog, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...
...Hardcover $8.95...
...More and more readers have less and less to read...
...As for the speeches: "...most of the time the waters of governmental eloquence flow smoothly and blandly, bearing their cargo of commonplaces down the canals of predictability...
...As a saying quoted by Sevela states, it takes great efforts to get out of Russia but still greater ones to remain in Israel...
...he too is a man who had little real connection with adistinctly Jewish life prior to his departure for Israel, and who from all appearances has established no substantial connection since his arrival there...
...Can a state of things that has existed for more than 600 years be labelled by any stretch of the imagination an "aberration" ? Only an Arnold Toynbee could sympathize, with such a sweeping dictum...
...His motives may in fact be very much like those of his friend...
...And to counter the reproach that he treats "grave matters lightly," Leys maintains that under the circumstances prevailing in the PRC today, no visitor is in a position "to write anything but frivolities...
...This edition includes an Addendum on "The Concept of Idle Money...
...In his approach to the Maoist regime, Schell is much more positive than Leys...
...If they venture to taste the delights of Peking "culture," they find Madame Mao's six Revolutionary Model operas, a few lousy movies, and some mediocre restaurants...
...Despite this, Mr...
...others have been "recycled" in the fields and factories...
...Or is Leys unduly cynical...
...One particularly striking example is his story of an old friend, Heinrich...
...but it had themisfortune to be led—or rather misled—by Truman in a crucial period...
...He was fully educated in Russian culture, made films in Russian, and Russian was his native and only language...
...Here Leys' sardonic style proves an effective medium as he describes...
...He sacrificed everything to join the nation from which he had always been so remote and, even at this late stage, to offer it his gifts...
...Sevela's story leads one to suspect that he has not been entirely honest either with himself or with his readers about the motives behind his own rejection of Israel...
...He is ready to be impressed by the accomplishments of the People's Republic, and is indeed impressed on more than one occasion: for instance, his excited and vividreport of brain surgery (with the use of acupuncture to anesthetize the patient) in Shanghai, or his account of the incredible grace and skill of professional acrobats...
...BOOK REVIEW Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948 Robert J. Donovan / W.W...
...Armen A. Alchian is Professor of Economics at UCLA and coauthor of the textbook University Economics...
...This is by no means the only case in which Mr...
...On the other hand, permanent foreign residents, such as embassy staffs, are consigned to their "ghettos" in Peking...
...The implication seems obvious: The Chinese rulers are ashamed to show foreigners what goes on in the classrooms "devoted" to the humanities and socialsciences...
...It is after all a fundamental question, if not the most fundamental question, that the Jewish inhabitants of a Jewish state must try to answer...
...Non-Chinese visitors, for example, are caught up in a whirlwind of activity that is designed to hide the limited and highly structured nature of what they see and hear...
...Yet after reading Leys I could not help but reflect upon the atypical nature of these things in China today...
...Given Leys' own purpose, I cannot fault this book for its one-sidedness...
...The marvelous archaeological exhibit that recently captivated hundreds of thousands of spectators in this country, as well as in Europe and Canada, is a prime example of such a mirage, created to "obliterate the echoes of the Cultural Revolution's savage vandalism...
...Cut off from the everyday life of the Chinese people, the foreigner must either dish up a warmed-over version 32 The American Spectator March 1978 of the official propaganda so generously provided or string together fleeting and disconnected glimpses of what lies beyond the nearly impenetrable bureaucratic barricade...
...In bidding farewell, Truman challenged this appraisal, insisting that he had been unusually successful...
...A quarter century ago most Americans had a negative opinion, one that historians soon attempted to correct...
...The group not only had one of the standard two-week tours of Peking, Yenan, Sian, Shaoshan (Mao's birthplace), and Shanghai, but also was permitted to spend time working in a Shanghai factory and in the fields of the model Tachai Brigade in Shansi...
...Only those Soviet Jewish emigrants who have a meaningful interest in the renaissance of Jewish national life are likely to make such efforts...
...In 1972 he revisited China for six months and went back briefly once more in 1973, before having his true identity disclosed to the Peking authorities by people he calls "the Maoist faithful" in Europe...
...But in fact many Israelis, both religious and nonreligious, would want to argue...
...A pioneering classic that will continue to provoke controversy—and serious thought—for years to come...
...Everybody goes to pretty much the same places and talks to Now Available: Economic Forces at Work Selected Works by Armen A. Alchian A long-needed collection of Alchian's major papers, including his seminal "Uncertainty, Evolution and Economic Theory...
...He could not have taken this step for personal advantage in order, through the good offices of the Orthodox Mission, to obtain a free ticket to America...
...He had permitted the Communists to gain control of Eastern Europe and China, and he had failed to prevent—and then to end—the Korean war...
...Yearning for an effective president, they considered him to be weak and indecisive...
...Simon Leys is the nom de plume of Pierre Ryckmans, a Belgian art historian who has written several books in the Chinese field...
...Only running dogs of Communism remain to spew out the constantly shifting and mutually contradictory justifications of the protean party line...
...After less than a year in Israel, while still in the process of learning Hebrew, Heinrich became very morose, despairing of "having a movie camera inhis hands...
...These are the showpieces reserved for foreigners...
...Seating arrangements are the consequence of "some complex algebra that would have fascinated the Duc de St...
...Regarding himself as more prophet than historian, Leys draws the reader's attention particularly to chapters five, six, and eight, in which he treats of the bureaucracy, cultural policy, and the "class struggle...
...Secondly, according to Leys, all of Chinese history since the founding of the Ming dynasty has been one long aberration leading the "most civilizedpeople on earth" into the "rut" of Maoism...
...Sevela on the grounds that he was unlikely to anticipate what came as a surprise to so many other Israelis...
...At times he appears to attribute to them all the credit for the brilliant cultural achievements of China's past...
...After all, the Bible indicates that it was a great deal easier for the Children of Israel to leave Egypt than it was for them to shed the habits of servitude and enter the Promised Land...
...Is he a bit naive in this...
...Hence, the "negative" and "disjointed" traits of this book, to which the author himself readily admits...
...Includes papers by William T. Baxter, Solomon Fabricant, William H. Fletcher, W. Allen Spivey and William J. Wrobleski, Robert T. Sprouse...
...He says, for example, that he does not think "that anyone will want to argue with me when I suggest that the celebrated discussion about who is a Jew, which has been torturing the country for so many years, smells of primitive racism a mile off...
...And I wager that the acrobats are the product of traditional Chinese training passed down from generation to generation like the "families" of Noh and Kabuki actors in Japan...
...He came home to work for his doctorate at the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California in Berkeley...
...The message is summed up in the first two sentences: Having visited some universities in China, it would be easier for me to write about Chinese taxidermy than about higher education...
...Perhaps chapter one, entitled "Foreigners in the People's Republic," makes for the most enjoyable reading...
...I confess I am not sure...
...What he did must have been a statement—his protest against the snare for immigrants that the Jewish state had become...
...In so doing he made some mention of the economy and civil rights, but he emphasized foreign affairs, especially the decision to intervene in Korea...
...Indeed, when one discounts the respective biases of the two authors, what each reports tends to reinforce the observations of the other...
...Now, Truman has become a hero to the people, while Richard Kirkendall is professor of history at Indiana University and editor of The Truman Period as a Research Field...
...At any rate, Leys and Schell complement each other in interesting ways, and both are well worth reading...
...and what is left is political pabulum...
...After graduating from Harvard, he spent several years in the Far East mastering Chinese...
...As for cultural life since 1949 the surface appearance is of pendulum-like swings from rigid control to relative freedom to rigid control to relative freedom, tick-tock, tick-tock...
...But I do detect a couple of major flaws, even if we play by the author's ground rules...
...All current "literature" is done "by the numbers," as they are carefully enumerated for the edification of aspiring writers, while the works of Lu Hsim, the greatest revolutionary writer of 20th-century China, are relegated to locked bookcases in museums...
...Sevela's self-proclaimed capacity to face the truth seems a bit dubious...
...The process will be complete when China finishes the difficult task of converting to a phonetic system of writing with Roman letters...
...Like most of us, he was fully assimilated...
...He first visited China in 1955 at the age of 19, became sufficiently acculturated to marry a Chinese woman, and later resided in Hong Kong for five years...
...A t the age of 35, Orville Schell visited China in 1975 in a party of twenty Americans varying in age from 18 to 60...
...There only survive technicians in propaganda, science, and technology...
...What is surprising is that a man whose self-proclaimed virtue is honesty should fail to recognize and admit that these factors are the chief source of his dissatisfaction...
...First, Leys is ambiguous and ambivalent about the nature of the Chinese "masses...
...That there are a few Soviet Jews like Mr...
...One may agree that there is no reason to censure Heinrich, but it is hard to believe that considerations of personal advantage had nothing to do with his decision to leave Israel...
...Moreover, Mr...
...It is not surprising, then, that a man like Sevela, lacking any interest in this question and finding no immediate private fulfillment in Israel, should find the difficulties of life in a young, small, and threatened country insupportable...
...Happily for Israel the number of such Soviet Jews is by no means small...
...On the contrary, he modestly asserts that Chinese Shadows is intended simply to complement the work of scholars he admires, like Han Suyin, Edgar Snow, and John King Fairbank, and to add "some shadows without which even the most luminous portrait lacks depth...
...The foreword to the English-language edition adds a few notes as of 1976...
...Nevertheless he did find himself in precisely these circumstances, making a film for the Russian Orthodox Mission in Jerusalem...
...Like Leys, he is frustrated in his attempts to break through the official facade and to establish meaningful relationships with individual Chinese...
...Yet elsewhere he endorses Lu Hsiin' s pessimistic dictum about the slave-like character of the Chinese people...
...This policy, steadily followed since the Yenan days, has resulted in the near-total extinction of Chinese intellectuals as such...
...Hardcover $8.95...
...He implied that he had 34 The American Spectator March 1978...
...Economic Calculation Under Inflation Provocative insights for businessmen, government officials and individual consumers on how to make economic decisions when economic information is seriously, and continually, distorted by inflation...
...Then the Chinese people will be effectively severed from any knowledge of their magnificent literary heritage...
...Nevertheless, this book was evidently finished after the Israeli elections, as one may conclude from a few muted references to the Labour Party's fall from power...
...Red" appears destined to prevail over "expert," except where the latter is politically essential...
...Simon....During lulls there is music: a band from the People's Liberation Army plays at regular intervals, like a well-oiled music box, from its vast repertory of about a dozen tunes...
...Sevela should occasion little surprise or consternation...
...He attributes the difficulties not to the deliberate machinations of a totalitarian regime, or to the frightened reactions of aspiring bureaucrats, but to an underlying cultural difference that orients the Chinese to collectivist attitudes and makes them quite uncurious about western ways and western preoccupations...
...The visit was arranged through the Hinton family of the Putney School in Vermont, a family regarded by the rulers of the PRC as enthusiastic and reliable friends...
...an irreducible minority of them have committed suicide or been liquidated...
...LibertyPress LibertyCbssics We pay postage on prepaid orders...
...While eager to see everything good that he can find, he nonetheless frequently complains about the boring "B.I.' s" (Brief Introductions) read or spoken by rote wherever his group was allowed to visit...
...After all, a country as small as Israel offers relatively little opportunity for filmmaking and still less for a filmmaker who does not speak the language...
...In reality, says Leys, there has been a constant erosion of the cultural heritage and suffocation of intellectual life...
...Schell is less cynical than Leys, however, in explaining the motives of those who thus frustrate the curiosity of western visitors...
...Schell was well qualified to get the most out of a limited and carefully controlled experience...
...A6 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250 The American Spectator March 1978 33 pretty much the same people, so that for them China is reduced to the "cozy proximity of a small-town Rotary Club...
...Hardcover $10.00, Paperback $3.50...
...It is therefore not only his judgment that may be questioned but also the honesty in which he seems to take such pride...
...Leys spent a large part of the years 1972 and 1973 writing this book, which first appeared in French in 1974 as Ombres Chinoises...
...Everywhere I went the authorities persisted in showing me dusty glass cases full of stuffed animals in zoology department galleries instead of allowing me to see, as I asked to see each time, the Faculties of Arts and Letters at work...
...In his mordant, sarcastic prose Leys revels in ridiculing the 30 hierarchical classes of the bureaucracy in an "egalitarian" society, the obsession of Chinese officials with protocol, the hypocritical masking of some obvious forms of class division (such as in railroad accommodations and military uniforms), the magnificent fringe benefits for those in the top ranks (including riding everywhere in long, black Hung-ch'i limousines before which all barriers open and all heads bow), the sharp salary differentials, and so on at considerable length and with telling effect...
...Nor is there any reason to blame Israel if it found itself incapable of accepting Heinrich's gifts...
...The Theory of Idle Resources By W. H. Hutt A telling attack on Lord Keynes' concept of unemployment—first published in 1939, now revised and updated...
...Leys disclaims any attempt to write a complete and well-balanced account of the People's Republic...
...Heinrich initially had no inclination to emigrate to Israel, but he eventually followed Sevela's example...
...the various categories of foreigners and how they are each manipulated in a way supposedly advantageous to the Maoist regime...
...Wendell N. Calkins is chairman of the history department at Wabash College...
...Even one's servants are provided by the service section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs...
...Sevela labors under an additional handicap: He has only a brief acquaintance with actual democracies and their slow, somewhat chaotic, but often effective resolution of political problems...
...scholars have become more cautious, and even unfavorable...
...Chapter seven deals with universities...
...Sevela did not see fit to alter his opinion of the vicissitudes and future of Israeli political life...
...Besides, it is great fun to read...
...The Cultural Revolution produced an intellectual desert, and the oases that have seemed to appear in the last five years are nothing but mirages to tantalize the unwary...
...Indeed, Schell is very much aware of this situation...
...Sevela, who constantly bewails the fact that many atheistic Soviet immigrants are faced with a choice between the hypocrisy of conversion to Judaism or future legal difficulties in Israel, says about this man: I neither judge nor accuse him...
...To be sure he was never ignored, but what is striking today is that most people express admiration for him...
...Norton / $14.95 Richard Kirkendall veryone, it seems, now has an opinion Ea on Harry Truman' s quality as president...
...Yet, choosing the latter course, Leys insists that these ephemeral sketches will prove to have lasting value, since the characteristics of totalitarianism which they adumbrate are as constant and unchanging as human institutions can be...
...While literacy rapidly rises among the younger Chinese, access to books precipitously declines...
...Shortly thereafter Heinrich, an atheist, had his children baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church and left with them for America...
...Whenever he seems about to do so, his official guide and interpreter intervenes to foil the move...
...So, back to the ghetto to watch old Fernandel films at the French Embassy...
...He too is a filmmaker who has found no employment in his profession since arriving in Israel...
...If Leys' analysis of the state of higher education is accurate, we can cherish little hope that the current, much touted reemphasis upon intellectual standards and more rigorous examinations will produce any more than superficial changes...
Vol. 11 • March 1978 • No. 5
