Red China Blues by Jan Wong, twelve years on still a great read on China today

The best book I read all summer was Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now. I was a little wary since the book was published in 1997, I thought perhaps it might give an outdated picture of China. The author, Jan Wong, is a Canadian journalist who reported for the Globe and Mail and served as the Beijing correspondent from 1988 until 1994. Most interestingly, she was a self-avowed Maoist and was one of the first two foreign students allowed entry to China in 1972 to study at Beijing University.

Ms. Wong’s experience in China during the last years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was poignant particularly since she is a Westerner describing those times having actually experienced them. While I’ve read many accounts of the Cultural Revolution from books like Wild Swans and The Private Life of Chairman Mao, none have hit home with me like Red China Blues. She describes with wit and conviction her battle with her inner convictions to Mao Zedong Thought and the everyday craziness that went along with its implementation. She struggles for the “privilege” to join her worker-peasant-student classmates in hard labor both in the countryside and in machinery factories. And while she believes in the thought-reform that would come from such manual labor, she secretly eats imported sweets and celebrates on return to Beijing with a big meal at her favorite restaurant. Her feelings make sense to me – and I felt a relationship and understanding of Ms. Wong’s experiences unlike my readings of others' horrors during the Cultural Revolution.

Later, the author describes the transformation of her mindset as she sees through the chanted slogans and robotics and begins to question why and for what end these antics are performed. And while she returns to North America to receive her degree in journalism, her addiction to China and its dramatic changes in the post-Mao Deng era lead her back to Beijing to cover the country for Canada’s Globe and Mail. In these episodes, she describes the change in China so well and it is here that, although the descriptions are dated and I can relate changes I’ve seen in my own five years in China, the underlying assertions still ring true today. She describes in many differing stories the efforts of normal Chinese people to provide a good life for themselves and their families. And for me, after reading her account, it was the first time I felt like I partially understood what happened in the lead-up and aftermath of the protests on Tian’anmen Square and June 4, 1989.

As the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China nears, as an outsider, I constantly wonder at how Mao’s red book toting Communist Youth could one day be shouting slogans and the next, throw their Mao suits away and embrace capitalistic frosted jeans. But the answer is, essentially, wouldn’t I do the same? It’s a story of China’s survival.

From Sara Naumann, About.com's Guide to China Travel, guest-blogger for Chinese Culture.