by Ji Chaozhu
I don't trust politicians, but sometimes they inadvertently tell the truth. Whether that happens in this memoir by a Chinese guy who held posts in both the Chinese government and the UN is hard to say (actually, it's not: the answer is no). But even if you don't learn anything true, at least your heart will be warmed, for this book "recounts the heartfelt struggle of a man who loved two powerful nations that were at odds with each other." How romantic. I wonder which country gets the girl and if they all learn to get along.
1 comment:
I had the privilege to work with Ji Chaozhu on his memoir, "The Man on Mao's Right," and I was actually amazed at how open, honest, and critical he was about the insanity that swept across China periodically during the Mao years. What made his story so interesting to me was that he was not a politician for the vast majority of his official tenure, but a career diplomat who, rather than making policy, observed it being made and implemented. You've never read anything like his account of the Chinese side of the Korean War, during which he concedes that atrocities were committed on all sides. As Kirkus Reviews put it in their prepublication review, this is a "brave, beautifully-written testimony...a true, fly-on-the-wall account" of the inner workings of Mao's government. What made the story so accessible to me was that Ji was educated in New York after escaping the Japanese, and when he went back to China as a college-age student in 1951, he had completely forgotten all his Chinese and hated rice, garlic, and other of his native staples. He was a hamburgers-and-french-fries kind of kid who washed dishes to pay his way through high school and Harvard. One of the most improbable-but-true details is that his old father had a small part as a Chinese doctor in the popular 1944 film "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," in which his character treats injured American flyers who had to ditch in China after dropping their bombs on Tokyo. It's a fascinating story, even when you know it. --Foster Winans
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