Both programs underlined for me, however, that China—and in respect to the two books, Beijing (Peking)—really has not changed from a century ago, or as far back as one wishes to reach. China is ever changing, and yet ever unchanging. She may put on a different dress now and then, but underneath, she has remained this place where the huge pool of the poor are unimaginably poor, and the small number of rich, frequently corrupt beyond comprehension, live in open opulence.

The two books, René Leys and Peking Story, cover two phases of this changing, unchanging place. Frenchman Victor Segalen wrote of the period just before the fall of the last imperial dynasty, the Qing, in 1911. As a result we are witness to a very richly embroidered tale. The American, David Kidd, experienced the end of the 1911 republic founded by Sun Yatsen as it finally died when the Communists defeated the Kuomintang in 1948. Kidd lived under the rule of the Communists, led by Mao Zedong (Tse-tung), for two years until it became obvious that it was best for him and his Chinese wife to leave the country.

Each writer tells a very different story, but soon one can see the similarities between the dying and the newly arising societies. Of course, it may be presumptuous for me to expect that readers unfamiliar with China can draw quite the same conclusion, but to me, these similarities soon become evident. As I said before, China may change her dress, but her underpinnings remain quite unchanged from one regime to another.

As an aside, please note that the review uses modern Pinyin romanization for Chinese names with the old spelling in brackets. This is done to ensure that readers can relate to Chinese names as they now appear in newspapers, etc. Segalen uses the old form throughout the book, even going as far as spelling Peking 'Pei-king'.

Segalen, who died under mysterious circumstances at age 41 in a Breton forest in 1919, has only recently come to the attention of the reading public. As late as 1996, a university in Bordeaux was named after him, and now his books are being republished, including in English. His style is associated with 19^th century exoticism. He approached the subject, however, from a different angle than his stylistic predecessors and peers in that he attempted to break away from viewing other societies—the exotic— not only from his point of view, but through the eyes of the people in foreign societies about whom he wrote.

The former naval doctor, turned travel writer, poet and novelist, captures the essence of China in René Leys with scholarly clarity, yet poetic intensity. He combines mystique, mystery, romance, elements of the spy novel, and stark reality in a way that leaves one breathless with wonder. He provides an ending that is so unexpected that one can only say he had a masterly touch that many a mystery writer might envy him. His writing style in René Leys may have been too advanced for his day (the novel was publish posthumously in 1922), but fits very well into our own time. It must be said, however, that he was not a friend of democracy, nor of women’s emancipation, both of which he saw as eroding the essence of the exotic societies he so admired, and wanted to see preserved.

René Leys is a novel by a man with a vivid imagination, who happened to have a deep interest in China, and spent some time on archeological tours of the country. He studied Chinese, although it is not clear which of the language’s many dialects or branches. Today, the official language of China is Mandarin (the western name), or Putongua (meaning ‘standard speech’) as the Chinese know it officially. It is a northern dialect that in Segalen’s time was spoken only by the educated, who had passed their examination in the Chinese classics and became public officials, hence Mandarins. Segalen's narrator in René Leys refers to "the difficult 'Northern Mandarin'" in the opening pages of the novel, but also uses the term Pekingese when referring to the language spoken by his tutor, the enigmatic René Leys.

Leys is a young Belgian, who was apparently modeled on a young Frenchman, whom Segalen met in China, and who appeared to have known a great deal about the daily affairs of the Forbidden City, and the imperial family. Leys, too, has an amazing knowledge of and access to the place that so greatly fascinates the novel's narrator. Through Leys he wants to get to know the 'Within', the seat of power, the innermost workings of the Forbidden City.

In the beginning of 1911, when the narrator arrives in Beijing (Peking), China is ruled by the Regent, Prince Chun, on behalf of the boy king, Puyi (Pui). We all know the boy as 'The Last Emperor' from the movie made in the 1980s. But the book is not concerned with him. Instead it probes the power of the Eunuchs and that of the late Dowager Empress Cixi (Tz'u Hsi), the life of the late emperor, Guangxu (Kuang Hsu), the dowager empress Long Yu, and the workings of a doomed empire, run by an ineffective Chun II.

Young Leys introduces the narrator to a world of intrigue, as well as to social customs, the Peking Opera, houses of ill repute, and to numerous Manchu princelings in various states of dissipation. One must remember that the dynastic China had as many of these princes as Saudi Arabia has today (the latter has about 700).As well, the reader is given a tour of the city of many walls that unfortunately no longer exists. Beijing had numerous walls within walls that surrounded various districts, such as the Tartar City, home to the narrator. These walled districts surrounded the final walled city, the Forbidden City.

When Mao took power, he saw to it that with the exception of the Forbidden City, all of the other walled quarters were slowly eliminated. So, in René Leys we get to view the physical Beijing as it no longer exists, which adds to the novel's fascination for us.

Kidd came to China as an exchange student in 1946. His autobiography of his years in Beijing just prior to and after the assent of Mao, also still describes the old city that has now vanished. Beijing, however, was not the seat of power during the first few years of his stay. It ceased being the capital after China became a republic. Nanjing (Nanking) became the capital, and eventually under the Nationalists and Chiang Kai-shek was moved to Chonqing (Chungking) to safeguard it against the Communists. Consequently, Kidd's story is less concerned with politics, but with the day-to-day lives of a powerful family coming to grips with a fading world.

Kidd married the daughter of a former Chief Justice of China. He met his future wife at a performance of a Peking Opera. Old Mr. Yu and his family led a life of immense grandeur that came to a quick end once the Communists took power and Beijing once again became the capital of China. The Yu mansion, in which the family had lived for many generations, lay on land surrounded by high walls. It consisted of many buildings, and was home to an extended family that included not only the children and their spouses and offspring, but also an old aunt and her companion.

They are all suddenly faced with a very different world as their home literally crumbles down around them. But, most of all, Kidd gives us a very detailed insight into how the old order is replaced by the new. It is a sometimes macabre image, certainly a sinister one, and also a sadly romantic one. But, as one compares Kidd's tale with that of Segalen's it becomes very clear that intrigue is a way of life in China, whether it is imperial or communist.

Parts of the Forbidden City are now open to the public, but most of it is still forbidden territory. Now as in past ages, it is the seat of power, the seat of intrigue, and of a lifestyle that is unavailable to the ordinary Chinese. Kidd's book does not take us into the Forbidden City, but it shows us what directions issue forth from it to control the lives of the people. Kidd, like Segalen, has an eye for detail. But, unlike the Frenchman's tale that is based on fact but fashioned through the filter of his imagination, the American's story is an intimate account of real happenings filtered through nothing but reality.

What is not part of the story is that after his return to America in 1950, he is caught up in the paranoia of McCarthyism. He is seen as being a person of suspicion because he had remained in China after Mao's take-over. His career peters out, while his wife enters university in the States and eventually becomes a respected scientist, free of any suspicion.

The couple eventually separated because Kidd chose to move to Japan where he set up a school to preserve the ancient ways of the Japanese culture. Having witnessed the decline of one culture, he decided to save another. He does go back to China in 1981. His book recounts his experience at that time. He bemoans the loss of the old ways, but fails to see that they have been preserved in a different fashion. China still has walled compounds in every large city where the elite party members live, separated from the ordinary folk. We all became familiar with this hypocritical life of communist party members when the Berlin Wall fell and East Germany's elite was discovered to live very privileged lives, indeed.

There is much to like about China and its people, past and present, and much to despair about. These two books are eminently worth reading, and give good insight into what made and makes the Middle Kingdom tick.

[René Leys by Victor Segalen,  paperback, 210 page, $22.95/Peking Story by David Kidd, paperback,
183 pages – both published by New York Review Books]

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