Legacies: a Chinese mosaic

Consultant for CBS News in Beijing, Bette Bao Lord had left China for a visit to New York just days before the Tiananmen Square massacre. Yet her kaleidoscopic blend of reportage, oral history, reminiscence and family reunion sets the agony of China's current situation against decades of smoldering ferment for democratic change. A popular novelist ( Spring Moon ) and wife of Reagan's ambassador to China, Winston Lord, the author interweaves a chorus of Chinese voices: an actress whose father committed suicide rather than submit to the Party's will; a journalist paralyzed with fear; an aged scholar who was tortured and imprisoned for years; a doctor appalled at the bribery and ``gift''-giving rampant in Chinese medicine. Lord writes beautifully and poignantly. 150,000 first printing; BOMC alternate; author tour. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

YA --Using the dramatic chronology of the ``China Spring'' demonstrations in 1989 as her structure, Lord illuminates the mystery that is China for Westerners. While in The People's Republic of China as the wife of the American Ambassador, she renewed family ties that had been severed in 1949 when she and her family departed for a political assignment in America. Using narratives from her Chinese family and new friends, Lord is able to repair her family heritage and come to terms with the disparity of the two cultures that she shares. This is a fascinating account of China from 1949-1989 and the tenacity with which the Chinese people hold on to life within a constantly vacillating world. The book is a valuable resource in helping students better understand the background from which the ``China Spring'' came. It also illustrates the demands placed on an individual who must live a bicultural life. An outstanding chronology is included. --Dolores M. Steinhauer, Jefferson Sci-Tech, Alexandria, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

From the autobiographical recordings which Chinese friends gave her in spring 1989 upon her departure from Beijing as the wife of Reagan's U.S. ambassador to China and the stories of her own relatives, Lord, also author of the popular novel Spring Moon ( LJ 10/15/80), creates an intimate portrait of Chinese lives and politics. Her strong prose reveals people who endured persecution and imprisonment with courage and even humor during the Cultural Revolution, experiences which seem to foreshadow the recent events and aftereffects of Tiananmen Square. Comparable in its interview style to Xinxin Zhang & Sang Ye's Chinese Lives ( LJ 11/1/87), Lord's book is both more somber about China and more hopeful about the human will to survive amid hardship. It will give a deeper understanding of the Cultural Revolution and contemporary China to many readers. BOMC alternate; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/89.--Elizabeth Teo, Moraine Valley Community Coll. Lib., Palos Hills, Ill. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A riveting collection of first-person accounts of life in 20th-century China, as powerful as the author's best-selling novel, Spring Moon (1981). Posted to China as the wife of US Ambassador Winston Lord shortly after the publication of her novel, Lord set to work compiling an oral history of the country by recording the life stories of a wide array of Chinese citizens. Their accounts testify to China's years of turmoil and suffering, particularly during the Cultural Revolution, in a singularly intimate and affecting way. While many reveal years of guilt for having betrayed parents, teachers, and mentors in the Cultural Revolution's political frenzy, others relive their bewilderment and alienation as former doctors, actors, and teachers whose nightmarish fall from a life of patriotic duty included daily beatings by former students, months spent locked in a schoolroom closet, and routine imprisonment without redress. During those years, as one survivor put it, everyone in China got a chance to accuse and be accused. The result was the permanent dismemberment of family structures and the engendering of such profound fear, suspicion, and hypocrisy that little faith remains today, Lord suggests, in governmental authority, individual ethics, or even honest work. Given such a brutal past, the student uprising at Tiananmen Square, which Lord witnessed as a CBS News consultant, appears all the more miraculous. Equally inspiring is her account of the actions of many older citizens--those who blocked tanks and provided the students with food, for instance, despite their well-grounded conviction that disaster could be the protest's only result. In setting the events leading up to the massacre against the heart-rending tales of her own and others' suffering at the hands of their mother country, Lord adds immense depth and resonance to this window into China. A breathtaking journalist achievement, not to be missed. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

From the autobiographical recordings which Chinese friends gave her in spring 1989 upon her departure from Beijing as the wife of Reagan's U.S. ambassador to China and the stories of her own relatives, Lord, also author of the popular novel Spring Moon ( LJ 10/15/80), creates an intimate portrait of Chinese lives and politics. Her strong prose reveals people who endured persecution and imprisonment with courage and even humor during the Cultural Revolution, experiences which seem to foreshadow the recent events and aftereffects of Tiananmen Square. Comparable in its interview style to Xinxin Zhang & Sang Ye's Chinese Lives ( LJ 11/1/87), Lord's book is both more somber about China and more hopeful about the human will to survive amid hardship. It will give a deeper understanding of the Cultural Revolution and contemporary China to many readers. BOMC alternate; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/89.--Elizabeth Teo, Moraine Valley Community Coll. Lib., Palos Hills, Ill. Copyright 1990 Cahners Business Information.

Consultant for CBS News in Beijing, Bette Bao Lord had left China for a visit to New York just days before the Tiananmen Square massacre. Yet her kaleidoscopic blend of reportage, oral history, reminiscence and family reunion sets the agony of China's current situation against decades of smoldering ferment for democratic change. A popular novelist ( Spring Moon ) and wife of Reagan's ambassador to China, Winston Lord, the author interweaves a chorus of Chinese voices: an actress whose father committed suicide rather than submit to the Party's will; a journalist paralyzed with fear; an aged scholar who was tortured and imprisoned for years; a doctor appalled at the bribery and ``gift''-giving rampant in Chinese medicine. Lord writes beautifully and poignantly. 150,000 first printing; BOMC alternate; author tour. (Apr.) Copyright 1990 Cahners Business Information.

As residents of contemporary China voice their opinions, we hear from an aged scholar who underwent torture and imprisonment, a doctor appalled at medical practices and a terrified journalist. According to PW , this ``kaleidoscopic blend of reportage, oral history, reminiscence and family reunion sets the agony of China's current situation against decades of smoldering ferment for democratic change.'' (Aug.) Copyright 1991 Cahners Business Information.

YA --Using the dramatic chronology of the ``China Spring'' demonstrations in 1989 as her structure, Lord illuminates the mystery that is China for Westerners. While in The People's Republic of China as the wife of the American Ambassador, she renewed family ties that had been severed in 1949 when she and her family departed for a political assignment in America. Using narratives from her Chinese family and new friends, Lord is able to repair her family heritage and come to terms with the disparity of the two cultures that she shares. This is a fascinating account of China from 1949-1989 and the tenacity with which the Chinese people hold on to life within a constantly vacillating world. The book is a valuable resource in helping students better understand the background from which the ``China Spring'' came. It also illustrates the demands placed on an individual who must live a bicultural life. An outstanding chronology is included. --Dolores M. Steinhauer, Jefferson Sci-Tech, Alexandria, VA # Copyright 1990 Cahners Business Information.