Asia Books

Among my favorite narratives in this anthology are; a Russian language teacher who married a Chinese man and the story of David and Isabel Crook.

Back when China and the USSR were best buds a language teacher came to China to teach Russian she fell in love with a Chinese man. They married and had two daughters. Everything was rosy until the Sino-Russian split.

David and Isabel Crook are two American Commies who defected to China for ideological reasons. David Crook was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution as were other similar Americans like Sidney Rittenberg. I would have liked to know more about what prompted two seemingly ordinary Americans defect to a communist country and stay throughout the Cultural Revolution.

There are many good narratives, but these two are the most interesting and unique. I liked this one better than Macao Remembers. I also saw this book for sale in Hong Kong, in the traditional characters. By the way I lent one of my Chinese friends this book and she was somewhat skeptical of some of the stories.

`China Remembers' by Zhang Lijia and Calum MacLeod groups 33 contributions from Chinese and foreign residents in China, arranged to give insight into the history of the People's Republic and leavened with introductions to guide the reader through the complexities of its political campaigns.

It is hard to imagine an editorial team better equipped for the task. Zhang Lijia's metamorphosis from Nanjing factory worker to freelance writer itself reflects China's heady leap from planned economy to sink-or-swim capitalism. Calum MacLeod, who I have counted a friend since we shared a mouldy hotel room in Xi'an in 1989, earns his living bridging the gap between international investors and newly corporate China.

The testimonies this Anglo-Chinese joint venture couple have gathered come as an antidote to the efforts by Mao Zedong and his communist comrades to force the world's most populous nation to march to a single beat. China Remembers bursts with human contradictions and surprises a world away from the tyranny of Marxist class truths.

Have you ever wondered what life has been like since `the people of China stood up' in 1949? If so then ` China Remembers' is the book for you.

Cleverly constructed by husband and wife team it provides a highly readable personal account of the defining moments in the lives of a variety of people. By interviewing hundreds of people and eliciting their stories they have painted a rich and vivid picture of 50 years in China. The characters endear themselves to the reader as they tell their stories. People such as a Chinese soldier in the Korean War, a farmer who lost almost all her family in China's terrible famine, a red guard in Shanghai during the cultural revolution to a modern day self-made business tycoon and a village carpenter striving to win democratic election to his village committee.

But what adds immeasurably to the charm and interest of this book are the linking introductions to each section and chapter. Written in a different, more academic style, the authors have set the historical, political and economic scene so that the reader can more readily identify and empathise with the achievements and problems related by each storyteller.

This book entertains as it educates, makes you laugh as well as cry and as China continues to rejoin the world, it enlightens understanding of a mysterious, enigmatic yet wholly human people. A great read!

"China Remembers", a collection of individual eyewitness accounts from a wide variety of participants in the last 50 years of Chinese history, vividly and poignantly portrays the realities of those years.

Divided into five "periods" - from "Consolidating Power:1949-1956" right up to the present day with "Entering the World:1990-1999", each of the "periods"comes to life through the voices of such witnesses as diverse as an interpreter of Mao Zedong, a young woman's experience of the Cultural Revolution in the remote countryside,a student who participated in the 1989 "Beijing Spring", a legal expert who returned to her native China after 10 years in the US, and a rubbish collector...among the 33 different "voices" of this vivid volume. Each very personal account is preceded by the authors' introduction.

The voices from the heart recount the turmoil of recent Chinese history - of the often unspoken horrors and unfathomable personal tragedies. The recollections are told in the first person and dwell with courage upon the past experiences, struggles and success against all odds and the opportunities and hope for the future.

Authors Zhang Lijia - born and raised in China - and Calum Macleod have memorably captured the emotion, complexity and contradictions of China's recent history in a work that provides gripping reading.

Emily Hahn has been an author and journalist since 1929, when her first stories appeared in The New Yorker magazine. In 1935, she ran away to China in an effort to forget a failed romance and to find herself. By the time she returned home eight years later on a refugee ship, she was a changed woman. China to Me is the story of her life, loves, and adventures in China. It's a candid and unabashed account of her romance with a Chinese poet, her battle to overcome opium addiction, her torrid love affair with a married British intelligence officer (with resulting child out of wedlock), her friendship with the illustrious Soong sisters, and her experiences in occupied Hong Kong. China to Me shocked America and became a bestseller when it was published. Hahn is a gifted writer with an easy, entertaining style. What's more she's a bright, witty, and engaging storyteller. Readers who are unfamiliar with her writings (she wrote 51 books)will enjoy this book. It's a great introduction to the writings of a woman who was a feminist before the word even invented and who is--as one of my friends puts it --"a forgotten American literary treasure."

I am writing to notify all readers that Ms. Hahn passed away in February 1997. She is survived by her daughters, Carola Vecchio and Amanda Boxer, and her husband, Charles Ralph Boxer

I found this book on a coffee table at a lodge in a remote part of WA state. I'm ashamed to say, I enjoyed it so much I snitched it and took it home with me. This is a fascinating book about a brave woman. She is so familiar in her writing, I felt like I knew her personally and had to find out what happened to her family! Good Read!

As the adopted granddaughter of Emily Hahn and a co-founder of Bastard Nation, I was especially moved by reading my grandmother's brave, amusing and thought-provoking account of keeping her out-of-wedlock child (my mother, Carola).

A superb study that is as engrossing as it is elegantly written and lavishly illustrated, and a sensitive inquiry into the aesthetics, the history and the philosophy that underpin an ancient and majestic civilization's view of mankinds's place within the cosmos. Both unique and profound. An essential work.

While the attitudes and examples of Japanese gardens abound in books and in cities around the world, very little has been written or photographs of the unique concepts found in the Chinese gardens. Maggie Keswick repairs that paucity of information with this very beautifully designed, photographed and written monograph on the spirit of the subtle beauties that abound in the Chinese garden.

Keswick offers an in depth analysis of the history of gardens in China and even if the reader is not an avid horticulturist, just the amount of information about China alone is reason to read this book carefully. But in addition to the history and the architectural elements of these gardens here considered, there are many graceful photographs and accompanying illustrations that keep pace with the narrative while providing an encouragement to return to the book purely for the art of it.

Keswick has found the middle ground in creating a volume about the elements of the Chinese garden and a volume that stands strongly as simply an art book. Highly recommended for repeated readings. Grady Harp, April 05

How great Chinese garden are!From north to south ,east to west,royal to normal,fancy to simple,you could see all of the best gardens in China.Especially two cities that must visit:Beijing,my hometown,and Suzhou,a wonderful small town built beside the river.The spirits of Chinese gardens were focused on how to combine nature and humanity together.The gardens in Suzhou absolutely rendered an ideal level without artificial fixing,you might called it "Eastern Venice".On the oher hand,Beijing seems much more luxurious since it used to be the capital of China for 5 dynasties.The best known garden named Summer Palace ,which settled in Western part of Beijing,belong to the royal family. A fire desaster ruined most valuable garden named Yuan Ming Yuan,if it still being there,Yuan Ming YUan might be the most gorgeous garden in the world.However we pitifully left a waste garden,morely a Country's shame.You luckily better read this book before you visit China.<>is a helpful tourguide take you a preview.

I've been a garden designer in Portland Oregon for twenty years and have spent over a year in China visiting gardens . This book is a very good place to begin if you want to understand , on a basic level, Chinese gardens . It is however, not the place to stop if you really seek to understand them . To do that you have to try to understand the culture and times which produced them. Fruitful Sites by Craig Clunas is the best work which I have found so far as it analyzes the gardens at Suzhou over the course of several dynasties. Chinese Classical Gardens of Suzhou (Hardcover)
by Tun-Chen Liu, Joseph C. Wang is also a very good book . It is a critique of most of the principal gardens in Suzhou and it punctures the illusion that every Chinese garden is equally great and every feature wonderful. And if you are actually going to travel to China to see gardens you really should read both of Peter Valder's books . They will help you understand Chinese plants and to find gardens in many Chinese cities. I don't always agree with Valder's assessments . He is quite restrained at times . And if you are planning to travel to Suzhou consider visiting Tongli as well. I also consider the gardens of The Slender West Lake in Yangzhou and other gardens there to be equal to many of the gardens in Suzhou. And if you are going to go to China I recommend you start reading The Orientalist online and purchase Beijing by Peter Neville Hadley so that you will not be shocked when you travel China . It is by no means an easy process if you want to travel beyond some air-con rip-off tour.

This book is totally awesome! I feel like I have a highly skilled Chinese art instructor right at the table with me. Ms Cameron learned from one of the best and now I am learning from one of the best. Like I said, totally awesome book!

This is a wonderful instructional book for anyone looking to begin the traditional art of Chinese painting. The author is a westerner who lived in China when she was young and was taught the techniques of painting by masters. Using her book is the next best thing to having an instructor by your side. Each technique is carefully explained and clearly illustrated in a way that makes learning fun and easy. Using this book should give you the skills and confidence desired on your way to learning the art of Chinese painting.

This book is excellent for beginers in chinese art and art in general. Taking you step by step from the beginning by illustrating the basic rules for strokes, techniques and compositions necessary for a well deveopled authentic piece of chinese art. Ms.Cameron shows you what to do and what not to do in a conversational manner that builds confidence. In a short period of practice i was very pleased with my progress. If i can do it any one can. Buy this book.

This book is excellent for beginers in chinese art and art in general. taking you from the beginning by illustrating the basic rules for strokes, techniques and compositions necessary for a well deveopled authentic piece of chinese art. Ms.Cameron shows you what to do and what not to do in a conversational manner that builds confidence. In a short period of practice i was very pleased with my progress. If i can do it any one can. Buy this book.

China is under attack from both Imperial political parties ( Democrats/Republicans ) , union bureaucrats, and the "anti-globalization"/Dalai Lama combination. Why ?

China shook the world in 1949.The Chinese revolution tore one fourth of humanity out of the orbit of the British and Yanqui imperial domains.The workers took the factories, the peasants took the land, and China stood up in the worldýrising from its knees. But this revolution was betrayed from the beginning by its leadership.The documents in this collection, written during the events by leading militants of a revolutionary workers party here in the U.S., explain this mighty revolution and its deformation ýby the opposite of communism : Stalin-ism, represented both by Mao Tse-tung and the ancestors of the present ruling clique.Chinese workers are already beginning to resist the encroachments of Imperial capital, organized by the capitalist wannabes at the head if the Chinese "Communist" Party. As capitalism spirals into its New Depression, the Chinese workers will resist in their hundreds of millions ý billions ! ý and shake the world again, together with the workers and farmers of the world, including here in the U.S.

Helps push aside the distractions provided by doddering old Chinese officialdom and trade wars waged by the G7, so the reader can grasp the fighting capacity of Chinese workers and peasants. Makes the case that big business and landowning forces were genuinely rousted by popular determination. So, all the faceless, nameless Chinese people who did this are the ones who qualitatively raised the stakes for the imperial war-mongers in their plans for World War III -- now they have to try to get back China, too! Useful and concrete on the bureaucratic stranglehold that the Chinese Communist Party maintained over the workers' movement from the very beginning. But the popular determination to repulse the invasion of Korea, and obtain land and freedom forced even Mao's hand. Also contains an article on challenges in developing China's backward economy that is very apropos today, given China's entry into the World Trade Organization and all the bunk that is being written about that.

This short work is an excellent introduction to huge developments in world history: the course of the anti-capitalist revolution that swept China after World War II and the controversial questions of leadership posed by the Maoist forces that headed the Chinese Communist Party at the time.

"The Chinese Revolution and Its Development" reprints a series of resolutions and articles adopted by revolutionary socialists in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s, analyzing and assessing the events in China at the time. The specific facts of the struggle for power in China in the late 1940s as part of the anti-colonial revolutions that swept much of the Third World after World War II; The U.S. war in Korea and the response of the Chinese worker and peasants; the twists and turns of the Maoist leadership once in power-- its all covered here. Of particular value are the detailed discussions of what it takes to overthrow capitalist rule and open the way to the possibility of developing a new, socialist society.

I'd strongly recommend following up this work with two longer titles on China published by Pathfinder Press: "Leon Trotsky on China" and "The Chinese Communist Party in Power" by veteran Chinese revolutionary P'eng Shu-tse.

As hundreds of thousands of workers in Northeast China strike and demonstrate against the corruption and oppression of China's bureaucracy, the contradictory nature of the Chinese revolution appears before the world. On the one hand, a great advance against European, Japanese, and American colonialism, and China's own exploiters. On the other hand, dominated by middle class Stalinists opposed to the real victory of workers in society. This set of documents chiefly by leaders of the US Socialist Workers Party documents the social transformation in China and its contradictions. As Chinese workers, students, and farmers move forward to confront the bureaucracy, this analysis written by revolutionists who look to their struggle will become a useful tool for struggle.

This study is by a Barnard College professor that I heard lecture at the China Institute in New York City. The traditional Chinese cultural custom of deforming women's feet to make them smaller, resulting in pain, deformity, and disability, is no longer practiced. But it is a complex and controversial subject involving, among other things, sex, social status, and feminism. For me the value of this book is the author's focus on the perspectives of women who experienced, continued, and even promoted the practice, highlighting their views on it's costs and benefits. It's a useful counterpoint and a rich resource.

Dorothy Ko locates the core of interpretation for footbinding lost in so much that has been written on the topic for the last 150 years. Ko has written extensively on the topic, feeling that such a complex phenomenon cannot be adequately explained by a book or two. Not content with prevailing feminist writings which privilege "oppressive patriarchy" as the only worthwhile conclusion, Ko frequently attracts critics who often suggest she glorifies footbinding and undoes strides towards gender equality. It's even been implied she undermines advancements made since the May Fourth events which empowered Chinese women almost 90 years ago.
Though some readers feel she euphemizes the "crippled feet" by resorting to cultural poetics which justify oppression, she actually advances a much more sophisticated strategy employed by the Han women of late imperial China. Rather than rage conspicuously against patriarchy the path lies in re-appropriating the meaning of footbinding to a custom that subverts the gender inequity; in short, diminishment of the oppression from within its complicity.
With Cinderella's Sisters Ko addresses the rhetorics called chanzu, tianzu, and fengzu (bound feet, natural feet, and letting out feet, repectively). A conflation of male desires, and a redefined view women had about their own bodies are both at odds with each other yet bound together in a custom whose meaning differs not just across gender and class, but across time and place. Ko produces very original and badly needed insights through new readings of Gu Hongming (1857-1928) and Wang Jingqi (1672-1726) contrasted with (some say) biased western scholars such as R. H. van Gulik (1910-1967) and Howard S. Levy (1920- ).
By translating women-authored works from anthologies of the Ming and Qing dynasties, Ko delights readers of this latest work who benefit by having the feminine perspective so often missing. When this recovered discourse converges with the new deeper readings of male texts, both anecdotal and scholarly, the subjectivity of a whole society comes together, resulting in unprecedented integrity. Indeed, Dorothy Ko's greatest "fault" is appending the subtitle A Revisionist History of Footbinding to Cinderella's Sisters. This book is not revisionist - this book is vision, belonging on every bookshelf of every library.

It's a wonderful book for chinese women's history, let you learn about the history of footbinding in feminism perspective.

Like a typical Westerner, when I first encountered the story of bound feet Chinese women, I was horrified. How could someone actually do something like that? But my initial disgust grew into interest, and I found I wanted to learn more than simply see the results of the practice of binding feet. The world is full of misinformation of this custom.

After reading Beverly Jackson's Splendid Slippers (a beautiful and informative book), I decided to find a more academic text on footbinding, and selected Dorothy Ko's Cinderella's Sisters. This book has provided me with a thorough overview of the historical context of footbinding. It explores the difference in gender perceptions of bound feet, the different definitions of bound feet, and more. Ko's style is very readable, and I appreciated her using Chinese terms (tiangzu, chanzu, fangzu) and their rich interpretations to illustrate her points and describe the historical context.

If the name John Blofeld means anything to you, you've probably been consulting the I Ching. Blofeld wrote a popular translation to the Chinese oracle at a time when the only other version available in English was Richard Wilhelm's groundbreaking but somewhat turgid text.

"City of Lingering Splendor" is an autobiographical travelogue, one of the best ever written. Dedicated to ' the hermits, scholars, youths and courtesans who inspired these pages ' it's a love letter to Peking and the breathtaking greatness of an ancient civilisation at its twilight, about to be extinguished.

While remote jungles still offer anthropologists the chance to chew the fat with stone age peoples, the romantics among us are simply out of luck. Until someone invents a working time machine, Ancient Egypt is gone forever along with Homer's Greece and Imperial Rome.

But in 1934 it was still possible to travel back in time. Back to Old China, to a culture that had remained virtually untouched for thousands of years---and chew Peking Duck with Taoist sages. . .

Wonderful reading.

This is the most sensitive, respectful and intelligent book I have read on traditional Chinese culture. The writing is terrific, on a par with Peter Fleming's, though more from the heart.

It records the author's love affair with the city before WW2 (and includes a return to Beijing after it). While meeting many of its remaining Daoist, Confucianist, Bhuddist and literary leaders and exploring its temples, nightlife and food, we get a last sympathetic, philosophical, tragic glimpse of the splendour decaying under the Republic. Before it vanished under the Maoists.

If you thought there was little more to pre-War China than footbinding, Dowager Empresses, opium and Shanghain greed and degeneracy, this book will even the score a little.

I had no idea when I picked up this book that I had such a pleasant experience in store for me. Beginning in 1934, a young man in his twenties spends "three exquisitely happy years" in a China at the edge of the abyss. Japan had already invaded Manchuria and made no secrets of its intentions of further conquest. The shaky Chinese Republic was ruled out of Nanking; and Peking was still full of memories of the old Dowager Empress, the last of her line.

The streets of Peking were full of Confucian scholars, aging palace eunuchs, adepts of Taoism and Buddhism, starving White Russian refugees, 14-year-old opium addicts, and gentle courtesans and flute girls. Blofeld threw himself headfirst into this world which was on the point of being snuffed out forever. Most memorable are the White Russian hermaphrodite Shura and the Rasputin-like Father Vassily; the decorous Buddhist scholar Dr Chang; Yang Taoshih, the Taoist sage, and his friend known only as the Peach Garden Hermit; the lovely courtesan Jade Flute; and the mysterious Pao, who elopes with a young girl intended for a Japanese colonel.

After Blofeld leaves for a trip to England, the Japanese finally invade. There are two bittersweet chapters at the end where Blofeld revisits the scenes of his youth after 1945. His fragile Peking of the 1930s is now poised between a growingly thuggish Kuomintang secret police and the great unknown of Mao Tse-tung's Eighth Route Army.

Blofeld's Dr Chang says it all: "Decay is inherent in all things, as Shakyamuni Buddha bade us always remember. Death swallows all that has been born; rebirth or re-creation follow in their turn, as spring follows winter. Things rise and wane in unceasing flux."

CITY OF LINGERING SPLENDOUR is recommended to all sentient beings who were ever young once and are now faced with a confused welter of possibilities, none of which seem particularly appetizing.

I have been reading John Blofeld since the 80's. His writing is honest and straight forward. What is special about this work is the time frame. It is a first hand account and we are not brought down by the dreary chronology or dry scholastic jibberish of Western history academics. His introduction warns of his awareness of the flaws of the culture, but he wishes to show the strengths and beauty of a dying civilization. Truly unique, inspiring and thought provoking

This is an outstanding book for understanding why the US military has such problems with confronting insurgency. Counterinsurgency is never easy, but the US has proved monumentally incompetent across generations of command. The book's thesis is that bad counterinsurgency doctrine made a successful intervention in Vietnam impossible, and that the conflict was lost as soon as it began.

The most crucial misconception is that there is no such thing as an organic, self developed insurgency. Insurgency was seen as the policy of a foreign nation seeking to intervene within a country, likely as a prelude to invasion. Insurgencies were dependent on foreign support for supplies, bases and command. Combatting an insurgency required severing the link between the foreign support and the insurgents.

Related to this was a belief that light military pressure, or even just the presence of US forces could compel the withdrawl of insurgent support, because such a presence would signify US resolve to oppose an invasion or intervention.

The application of this logic led to a dynamic where the US pressured North Vietnam in retaliation for VC attacks. North Vietnam interpreted that pressure not as a response to it's own policies but as a direct attack upon it's existence. Consequently it increased rather then decreased supplies and support for the VC, ultimately sending not just supplies but regular troops. In essence the US created exactly the scenario it's policies were intended to prevent.

That this is happening again in Iraq and Iran suggests too few people in command read this book.

I had the great privilege of taking many of Dr. Cable's classes while I was at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Dr. Cable is a true gift to the historical field. His courses were difficult, but his amazing story-telling ability shines both in class and in both of his books (conflict of myths and unholy grail). While reading his books, I can actually still hear his delivery and cadence. As we go further into a time when local squabbles and terrorists will engage the attention of our foreign policy, his writings and experiences are all the more appropriate.

Dr. Larry Cable's experience and intellectual appraisal for the counterinsurgency role of the U.S. armed forces in Southeast Asia are placed into perspective. While not completely supporting all U.S. activities regarding the reduction of irregular forces, Cable examines the reality on the ground that was the wake-up call for American military leaders in Vietnam. An extremely effective and important book that should be read as much for the intellectual value as the historical value.

This book analyzes how the US came to adopt the policy of using conventional tactics to fight the insurgency in Vietnam. It provides a great analysis of the American way of conducting war and gives examples of attempts to fight the war in other means. Author has/had first hand knowledge of what was going on behind the scenes in the 60's. This book is required reading at many military schools which realize our past failures and are trying to teach current military personnel how to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

You have to hand it to the Brits: there were elements of almost mystical grace about the way they lost, or shall we say misplaced, their Empire.

On dune and headland sank indeed the fire. But in its fading glow there were elements of decency and heroism, including Britain's lonely fight against Nazi Germany, survivors in the South Atlantic in 1982 singing "look on the bright side of life", and here, the conquest of Everest by a bunch of amateurs and jolly Sherpas, the latter being drunk most of the time on Strange Brew indeed.

Chronicled by a bloke who later became a lass who carried the message to Garcia with Tom Brownian pluck, who played up, played up, and played the game so that a chit of a girl could add a jewel to her crown, in a land no longer British.

Having stumbled around mountains myself courtesy of the patient tutelage of Outward Bound, another British invention, I can relate to a non-mountaineer slogging up into the thin cold air. And rather than sentimentalising mountain vistas when they are seen up close and personal, Morris makes it clear that these places are alternately glorious, unearthly in their beauty, and demon-haunted, and terrible in their menace.

The worst aspect of mountaineering for the tyro is, as Morris shows, the descent when everything has been done, but instead of basking in your accomplishment, you have to slog down, and gravity becomes your mortal enemy, driving weary bones into each other and mocking a descent that turns into another fall of man:

From what height thou see'est, into what pit fall'n

Sentimentalists in the American wilderness wonder at the bad temper of pioneers who name such picture postcard views, Devil's Leap, Hell's Rockyard, Lucifer's Barstool and Jornado del Muerte. They need only walk the walk on the talking rocks that mock you in the sun, or on Morris' ice falls turning into vile mush to realize that we have to earn our ticket to the Sublime.

Morris describes in this re-issued book, published long ago right after the great events, a gone world. Today, on Everest, every prospect pleases (well, many do) but only man is vile, and can pass people dying in the Yuppie way. That wouldn't have occured to the men he describes.

The solution to the transmission problems alone is worth the price of the book: like the book The Victorian Internet, this book shows that before the Internet, the urge to connect time and space was real and people were willing to do what was necessary to get the message to Garcia.

It is nobler to think that the Empire ended at "Coronation Everest", the decent bits, anyway. The Empire of time-serving colonial pukka sahibs and their impossible wives ended at Suez. The Empire of ideals, of Bertrand Russell, of hymn singing when the ship went down, of genuinely decent people doing their best, that ended on top of the world the week before the Coronation.

This is a wonderfully written book of the events surrounding the historic Everest expedition of 1953 which saw Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay summit Mount Everest. It was written by special correspondent for The London Times, James Morris, who accompanied the expedition and first broke the news to the world of the successful summit. The news fortuitously reached England on the eve of Queen Elizabeth's the II coronation of June 2, 1953, and was the cause for much nationalistic pride. Hence, the name of the book.

The book is reflective of the time in which it was written and evokes a feeling of an era long gone. Therein lies its charm. Nostalgia buffs will love it, as will those readers looking to consume anything about Everest. It will not disappoint, though the book is not about the climb to the summit in the strictest sense. The book chronicles in great detail the author's journey to Everest, as well as his personal experiences and observations while at Everest, waiting to break the story of the end result of the historic climb to the summit. It also chronicles the cloak and dagger methodology which he employed in order maintain exclusivity for The London Times.

It should be noted in the interest of clarity and to avoid confusion, that times do indeed change. The author, James Morris, underwent a gender change subsequent to the original 1958 publication of this book. When the book was released again, however, the publisher did so under the name which the author had since adopted, Jan Morris. James or Jan, the author is a hell of a writer, and the book is well worth reading.

Although the outcome is known, there is much to be gained from reading this book.

Apart from the specific history of the climb which 'conquered' Everest (a much-used but dubious claim about one of the great feats of human endeavour, and one not used by those involved), I was particularly interested in several aspects:

* The description of the expedition took place, the mechanics of it from someone outside the actual expedition;
* The non-mountaineer's view of mountain-climbing and experiences in the Khumbu ice-fall and Western Cwm especially. This was the experience many an armchair-Everesteer would wish for themselves, I am sure;
* The journalist's view of the people involved - all the other accounts I have read have been written from the point of view of being 'insiders' in the ecpedition - Hunt, Hillary, Tenzing, for example
* The mechanics of how Morris set up 'exclusive' media coverage from the mountain! It is amazing to think that it was a mere 50 years ago that messages were taking 8 days to reach London, when nowadays we hear live radio broadcasts of people dying in snowstorms, have immediate Internet access to expedition journals etc.

Thoroughly recommended for anyone with any interest at all in the subject.

This slim volume details the trip of London Times journalist Jan Morris with the 1953 British Everest Expedition. It provides interesting and unique first-hand accounts of Hillary, Tenzing, and other expedition personnel, as well as beautifully written descriptions of the landscape and persons encountered on the expedition. It is written in the style of its day - English "Public School" in tone - and reflects a love and command of the English language all too lacking in today's expedition accounts.

The account flows easily and draws the reader along with the expedition. Despite knowing the outcome, the reader is kept interested by the tone and language, and by the behind-the-scenes looks at how this mammoth effort came together, and its ultimate effect on those on the mountain and those back home in England. For example, as the book opens on the eve of Elizabeth II's Coronation, we see Field Marshal Montgomery reading the Time's account of Hillary and Tenzing's triumph as he waits in robes to process in the Coronation parade. Small asides such as this give the book its unique flavor, and make it an interesting and invaluable addition to the armchair (or actual) mountaineer's collection

As a Chinese communist party member, I'm supposed to tell a lie as usual, but I have to admit that I really love this book. However, sad stories are always hard to go over again and again, which will make me emotionally unacceptable. If I were a girl, Jingsheng, I would like to be your lover, but never your wife.

Wei Jingsheng is well known as China's leading dissident, but this book also establishes him as one of China's leading intellectuals. He has the courage to see and to say what others in China cannot. His letter to Deng Xiaoping about Tibet is an extraordinarily powerful piece of writing. It is worth buying the book for this alone.

The lack of heroes these days has become a truism. Our political leaders are beset by satyriasis and mendacity. Our sports icons gobble steroids, routinely violate the terms of their parole, and sometimes even behead their wives.

That makes it surprising to encounter a genuine hero, which the author of The Courage To Stand Alone certainly is. It is doubly strange that he should emerge from China, the land of groupthink and hyperconformity. Who would have thought that a child of the Cultural Revolution would become a major force for decency and dignity even as those qualities were being rendered quaint and passe by the rush for market share in the New Global Economy?

When Wei Jingsheng was first put into prison and began writing the letters that make up the bulk of To Stand Alone, Mandela had been in prison for 17 years, Solzhenitsyn had just published Gulag in English, and the concept of dissent was unknown in China. When Wei was released in 1997 and flew to the US after having served 18 years in China's gulag (known there as laogai), Mandela was president of South Africa, Solzhenitsyn had returned to a free Russia, and Deng had transformed China from a socialist police state to a plutocratic police state. With all the stuff in our hardware stores and clothing shops bearing the Made in China tag, you might even think China had been transformed into a free society. You would be mistaken to think that, however. Wei was imprisoned for exercising one of the simplest and most basic rights, that of free speech. He published a magazine. In it, he urged the Chinese Communist Party to honor all the grand promises it made in the constitutions it churned out from time to time, promises like "The People have the right to speak out freely, air views fully, hold great debates, and write dazibao (large character posters posted on walls in public places for all to read)".

Wei had begun his career as a dissident by putting up one such dazibao: his essay "Democracy: The Fifth Modernization". This document (included in To Stand Alone) is a piece of impassioned logic which a Jefferson or Hancock would be proud to sign. He wrote it and posted it the same night on Beijing's Democracy Wall. Unlike the others who posted writings there, Wei left his name and number. That wasn't safe, but Wei believed the Chinese were getting a worldwide reputation for spinelessness, thanks to people like Deng and Lin Biao who, during the reign of Mao Zedong, had taken the craft of brown-nosing and sycophancy to new depths.

In 1979 Deng was just beginning his reign, and many thought he was a new kind of leader, which he was, in some ways. In other ways he was the oldest kind of leader there is: a tyrant. In his magazine, Wei identified him as dictator-in-the-making a full 10 years before Deng ordered the murder of hundreds of students in Tiananmen Square. That prediction put Wei in prison, the special Chinese kind of prison where you are expected to confess your "errors" and "crimes".

There was a certain amount of international pressure on China, so Wei probably could have gotten out early for confessing his "crimes". But he had that thing about backbone, about standing upright for what you believe in. He was, it must be noted, a little stubborn. Actually, more than a little stubborn. Actually, you know nothing about stubborn until you read this book. Picture David Niven going into the oven in Bridge On The River Kwai for insisting on being treated like an officer according to the Geneva Convention. Now picture him doing that every day for 18 years, and you have some idea of what Wei went through. Not an oven, but a box without windows, very little food, very little heat in a region bordering Tibet, no medical care, sleep made impossible, beatings, solitary confinement for months on end...All these measures notwithstanding, Wei would not confess to a crime he had not committed. He wouldn't even get impolite. In his letters from prison, he demands the basic rights he's been stripped of in a tone less harsh than I use on my neighbor's barking dog. Reading these letters one occasionally gets the feeling he's been detained through some silly bureaucratic mix-up. Of course, he wasn't. He was thrown into the largest system of concentration camps that yet exists on the planet, just like millions of his compatriots. He's out now, but the others are still there, doing slave labor, starving, being executed by the score, involuntarily donating their organs to international markets...

When the Chinese Communist Party falls, as all brutal, sadistic regimes inevitably do, this book of letters and one landmark essay will be remembered as one of the chief causes of its demise.

Wei, if you read this, I would urge you to post Democracy: The Fifth Modernization on this site. It's common for authors to put excerpts of their books here, and that essay would be a perfect sample. I doubt the Party will be able to have it removed.

"Don't give the Chinese communists too much pressure, otherwise they cannot afford to provide food for the people." That is a pretext used by many countries or people to delay the democratization of China. Wei's counter-argument was: It is the people who provide food for the communists. Why did you reverse the order? Wei's political analysis is better than a lot of people with Ph.D. degrees. He is willing to tell the obvious even in face of personal danger. From now on, people who talk about contemporary Chinese politics should start from Wei's ideas. If they do not, they should at least explain why they are avoiding them.