Behind the Bamboo Curtain
SCHURMANN, H. F.
Behind the Bamboo Curtain CHINA AND HER SHADOW By Tibor Mende Coward-McCann. 360 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by H. F. SCHURMANN Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California Despite...
...and as for the rest of the book, it could have been written by anyone who had dutifully followed the literature in the field...
...Reviewed by H. F. SCHURMANN Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California Despite the frequently heard complaint that "we know nothing about China," there has been a steady flow of publication on the subject...
...For someone seeking a general orientation of the Chinese People's Republic, I would recommend Mende's book above most of those that have appeared within the last few years...
...The book is informative...
...The Hong Kong correspondents, of course, are restricted to gleanings from between the slits of the bamboo curtain...
...They have seen the country and talked with the people...
...Joint Publications Research Service output—all of which can generally be had by the public in major university libraries...
...it describes quite faithfully the major stages of development during the first decade of the existence of the Chinese People's Republic...
...As a presentation of "the situation in China,' the author has done his research in the Western literature on the subject, which is more than can be said for a good many other writers...
...and for the most part it is impartial in its judgments...
...He reports some of his impressions, but then only to legitimate his more general observations rather than to communicate experience...
...As for the academic work, while on the whole informative, it usually fails to conjure up any feeling of intimate acquaintance with the country...
...The Chinese obviously are quite happy to maintain the insulation, and the foreign observer seems to make little effort to break out of it and perceive something in meaningful detail...
...But such experiences are open only to a few specialists in the field...
...Yet even if direct contact is impossible, an alert observer will still see many things watching human behavior in streets, factories and communes...
...Strangely enough, it is a feeling which increases the more one reads about the country...
...One has the impression that the tourist moves through interstices which seal him off from that which he is observing...
...Regrettably, Mende does not indicate that he saw much more than the ubiquitous posters, gangs of laborers, the dress of the populace, food queues, etc., and these are mentioned merely in passing...
...Alas, such passages appear only occasionally...
...The news reporting, for example, seems oddly remote from reality, which is not surprising in view of the fact that Peking correspondents write little, and often do no more than rework official Chinese handouts...
...I have seen many color slides taken in China, and am impressed by what one can learn simply by studying them with care...
...What about visitors to China...
...Surely they must be able to communicate their experiences to those who have not had the opportunity of direct observation...
...Language, the formalism of interpreters, cadres and officials, the chasm between the styles of discourse of a Westerner and a Chinese Communist—all obviously make personal contacts exceedingly difficult...
...But reading through the mass of descriptive prose on China's industrial and agricultural development, on the communes, on relations with Russia and the West, one is always on the lookout for the occasional paragraphs which tell what the author actually saw...
...In academic circles, too, there is an effort to produce more work on the country...
...Unfortunately, such is not the case...
...He tells us nothing about the length of his stay, the circumstances under which he went, or his itinerary...
...For one thing, the number of visitors to Communist China is not inconsiderable, and the more articulate among them have written of their experiences...
...Tibor Mende's China and Her Shadow is, sad to say, no exception...
...Mende was in China during March 1959...
...On the whole, the writings of most visitors produce the same feeling of remoteness as the products of indirect observation...
...And for the ordinary reader, the raw material, with its English rendering of Communist Chinese jargon, is quite impenetrable...
...Yet there is some justification to a feeling of ignorance about China...
...All we know is that he was there, and that he was allowed to see some rather exceptional places (e.g., Urumchi in Sinkiang...
...For another, the rather large corps of newsmen in Hong Kong report regularly on Chinese developments...
...After rapidly reading through these brief passages relating to his actual experience in the country, one asks: Can this be all he saw and felt...
...Still, Mende has gratefully spared us the moralizing which so often forms the leitmotif of similar books on China, such as that by his compatriot, Simone de Beauvoir...
...By and large, it is a good and useful summary of what has been going on in recent years...
...And in the absence of American travelers, there have been a number of radio and television broadcasts having to do with China which utilize material gathered by non-American visitors...
...But for those seeking to penetrate the barrier of China's remoteness, something more is necessary...
...In the end, it is only firsthand reading of the Chinese documents and directly talking with people who have left the mainland that gives the outsider a feeling of what is going on...
...There is, of course, the language barrier, a problem unmitigated by the presence of indoctrinated interpreters...
...He comments intelligently, and in some detail, on most of the country's important problems...
...In addition, there is an immense amount of raw material available in English in the form of press and periodical translations, current digests, news analyses and U.S...
Vol. 46 • January 1963 • No. 1
