| Lancette Arts Journal Founded in 2000 |
Book Reviews From our Archives |
August 2003 |
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
The ever changing, never changing China
Two books tell its tale well
By Alidë Kohlhaas
Shortly after reading the two books that are the subject of this review, two documentaries about Beijing came to my attention on PBS, one from the Globe Trekker series, the other from Wide Angle. The Trekker documentaries are more infomercials than true documentaries because they always display the visited location's glamorous side, and avoid showing its darker face. Wide Angle takes a more comprehensive look and shows more of a subject's reality.
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 . . .
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