I Chose China: The Metamorphosis of a Country and a Man

Rating:
Summary: A sheltered and privileged American in China
Review: After reading Mr. Shapiro's "I Choose China", I have had much mixed feelings.

In the book, Mr. Shapiro's tone about Mao is almost identical as the "People's Daily" - the official Chinese newspaper of propaganda nature. He is positive about Deng XiaoPing and his successors as well.

In reality, Deng abolished Mao's policies and created a capitalistic society in 1979. It makes me wonder why Mr. Shapiro wrote about Mao according to the Chinese official guidelines while most Chinese people know very well that Mao was a man who committed unpardonable crimes to the Chinese people.

To many Chinese, Mao was a devil while Deng was a "kind of" saint. How can the devil and the saint be praised in the same time?

Mr. Shapiro narrated that his money was tight due to the Chinese currency being low in terms of the exchange rates. The cost of foreign travel was astronomical to the Chinese citizens. Yet he was able to travel to the US and Europe for many times including the pre-Deng years. How were his trips funded? The Chinese government gave him special treatment? I would think so. His grand daughter could even attend an expensive private school in Minnesota. Who paid for it? Alas, politics, connections, privileges etc... Were the readers informed? Nah...

To sum up, like they have done to many other westerners who live in China in the past and present, I think the Chinese government for political reasons has used Mr. Shapiro. These westerners were sheltered, were provided comfortable living, and were used for propaganda.

While I admire the great classical translation works by Mr. Shapiro (like Shui Hu and Family by Ba Jin), with much regret, I have to say that Sidney Shapiro only painted the bright side of the Chinese society in his book. The many years of darkness were simply buried.To state it unkindly, the author was a product of brainwash, Chinese style.

Rating:
Summary: A sheltered and privileged American in China
Review: After reading Mr. Shapiro's "I Choose China", I have had much mixed feelings.

In the book, Mr. Shapiro's tone about Mao is almost identical as the "People's Daily" - the official Chinese newspaper of propaganda nature. He is positive about Deng XiaoPing and his successors as well.

In reality, Deng abolished Mao's policies and created a capitalistic society in 1979. It makes me wonder why Mr. Shapiro wrote about Mao according to the Chinese official guidelines while most Chinese people know very well that Mao was a man who committed unpardonable crimes to the Chinese people.

To many Chinese, Mao was a devil while Deng was a "kind of" saint. How can the devil and the saint be praised in the same time?

Mr. Shapiro narrated that his money was tight due to the Chinese currency being low in terms of the exchange rates. The cost of foreign travel was astronomical to the Chinese citizens. Yet he was able to travel to the US and Europe for many times including the pre-Deng years. How were his trips funded? The Chinese government gave him special treatment? I would think so. His grand daughter could even attend an expensive private school in Minnesota. Who paid for it? Alas, politics, connections, privileges etc... Were the readers informed? Nah...

To sum up, like they have done to many other westerners who live in China in the past and present, I think the Chinese government for political reasons has used Mr. Shapiro. These westerners were sheltered, were provided comfortable living, and were used for propaganda.

While I admire the great classical translation works by Mr. Shapiro (like Shui Hu and Family by Ba Jin), with much regret, I have to say that Sidney Shapiro only painted the bright side of the Chinese society in his book. The many years of darkness were simply buried.To state it unkindly, the author was a product of brainwash, Chinese style.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful and fascinating
Review: I read his book with curiosity. I paid attention to hisnarration of political events and found them to be chronologicallyprecise. The only drawback is that he had neutralized many of the notorious events like Tiananmen Massacre and the Cultural Revolution etc.

The Chinese revolution is a tragedy from the very start when Dr Sun had to ally himself with the communists and Soviet Russia, but Mr Shapiro apparently was more influenced by the events starting from 1947 and the full-blown civil wars between communists and nationalists.

One thing I would like to point out is that Mr Shapiro, like all the communists and the people of the privileged class (enjoying free medicare, housing, retirement pay, car, and free trips to USA and Israel), would be doomed to ignore the nature of Chinese society, i.e., communists CASTE society, where 70-80% of Chinese population still live, without the aforementioned benefits: the daughters of those peasants burnt to death in prison-like toy factories set up by the joint ventures of red capitalists and foreign capitalists in SEZ and costal cities, the husbands and youths being the coolie responsible for buidling the skycrapers across China, and the wives tilling the fields under the sun and in the rains for 50 years. Mr Shapiro would not understand that while gestapos could move around in China or out of China using multiple passports, the people in the CASTE could not do so, with miners continuing to die on the yearly basis in caveins and explosions, the oil-workers continuing to be contained in Western China, and the peasant-born children forever bound to their birthplace.

-- CASTE means the children born would have to take mother's birth place as their locality of registration under communist doctrines, for sake of social stability and their ease of economic exploitation.

Certainly, I would give credit to his account of Chinese history, especially the part about Qin's terra cotta sooldiers, the civil service exams, the ancient legal system, and the history of Se Mu Ren (color-eyed people) and the Jew history in China. History-wise, I would only add that Han Dynasty was not a succession of Qin Empire in any sense. In fact, the beginning of Han is a RESTORATION of Zhou Dynasty system, namely, the restoration of dukedoms and principalities, as manifested by the enthronement of those kings and dukes in respective localities of those dukedoms and principalities, under the supervision of nominal king of Chu (a shephard boy, said to be the grandson of last Chu king) and the two generals of Xiang Yu and Liu Bang (later the first emperor of Han).

I would say a critical analysis of the book is worthwhile, and a comparative study with other books such as the one written by Mao's personal doctor from year 1955 to 1976 would be of great help.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful and fascinating
Review: I read his book with curiosity. I paid attention to hisnarration of political events and found them to be chronologicallyprecise. The only drawback is that he had neutralized many of the notorious events like Tiananmen Massacre and the Cultural Revolution etc.

The Chinese revolution is a tragedy from the very start when Dr Sun had to ally himself with the communists and Soviet Russia, but Mr Shapiro apparently was more influenced by the events starting from 1947 and the full-blown civil wars between communists and nationalists.

One thing I would like to point out is that Mr Shapiro, like all the communists and the people of the privileged class (enjoying free medicare, housing, retirement pay, car, and free trips to USA and Israel), would be doomed to ignore the nature of Chinese society, i.e., communists CASTE society, where 70-80% of Chinese population still live, without the aforementioned benefits: the daughters of those peasants burnt to death in prison-like toy factories set up by the joint ventures of red capitalists and foreign capitalists in SEZ and costal cities, the husbands and youths being the coolie responsible for buidling the skycrapers across China, and the wives tilling the fields under the sun and in the rains for 50 years. Mr Shapiro would not understand that while gestapos could move around in China or out of China using multiple passports, the people in the CASTE could not do so, with miners continuing to die on the yearly basis in caveins and explosions, the oil-workers continuing to be contained in Western China, and the peasant-born children forever bound to their birthplace.

-- CASTE means the children born would have to take mother's birth place as their locality of registration under communist doctrines, for sake of social stability and their ease of economic exploitation.

Certainly, I would give credit to his account of Chinese history, especially the part about Qin's terra cotta sooldiers, the civil service exams, the ancient legal system, and the history of Se Mu Ren (color-eyed people) and the Jew history in China. History-wise, I would only add that Han Dynasty was not a succession of Qin Empire in any sense. In fact, the beginning of Han is a RESTORATION of Zhou Dynasty system, namely, the restoration of dukedoms and principalities, as manifested by the enthronement of those kings and dukes in respective localities of those dukedoms and principalities, under the supervision of nominal king of Chu (a shephard boy, said to be the grandson of last Chu king) and the two generals of Xiang Yu and Liu Bang (later the first emperor of Han).

I would say a critical analysis of the book is worthwhile, and a comparative study with other books such as the one written by Mao's personal doctor from year 1955 to 1976 would be of great help.

Rating:
Summary: A very American Chinese, or a very Chinese American
Review: Sidney Shapiro went to China just after World War II. He had studied Chinese before coming, but he did not have a background in China, and had not planned to stay. He met and married a Chinese woman, and ended up staying on after the Communist takeover, working for the Chinese government as a translator. Shapiro is a very lucid writer, and easy to follow, but he seems obliged to rationalize some things about his adopted country that are hard to defend. For example, he says that Western missionaries left China after the war because they "were not needed anymore." Although I believe that his description of his life in China is an honest portrayal, there is always the feeling that he is sugarcoating policies that were clearly ill-fated. But Shapiro's book is just as noticeable for the things he concedes, such as the lack of press freedom in China. This book would be of special interest to individuals with an American frame of reference, because Shapiro is an American, and he writes in a very American style. Yet, he has lived and worked in China since just after World War II, a period of 50 years at the time the book was written in the mid nineties. Clearly, he has a better perspective on China than any other American born writer. You will not want to miss this book, but I would suggest reading a few of the others first, so that you have a little better framework from which to evaluate this one.