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Return to Middle Kingdom

Written by Our Reviewer

Thursday, 23 October 2008

A Trip Back In Time to China Reviewed by Stuart Nachbar In 1977, when I was a junior in high school, Roots was the first family legacy series I had read. I was motivated to read the book after I had learned so much from the TV series. The series spanned several generations of a black family immigrating to the United States and surviving slavery to eventually prosper on their own. Released nearly a decade after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Roots won nine Emmy Awards and the finale is the third-highest rating television program ever. The movie and book were factually disputed at the time, but I learned much from the story. Return to Middle Kingdom Thirty one years later, Yuan-Tsung Chen, a former Cornell University professor writes a different and more personal family legacy. Chen’s work, Return to the Middle Kingdom, spans 150 years of Chinese history and politics, through the eyes of her late husband, his father and grandfather. Like Roots, it has potential to be reworked into a movie or epic series; as Americans, we must gain more understanding of the nation that holds so many keys to our economic future.   Ah Chen, the author’s grandfather was a homeless peasant, but also a barber and carpenter who fought in the Taiping Rebellion of 1850-64, before and around the time of the U.S Civil War. Chinese injustice is similar to American injustice through Ah’s eyes; he flees China and becomes an indentured laborer in the West Indies before settling in Trinidad. Eugene Chen, Ah Chen’s oldest child grows up to become Trinidad’s first Chinese lawyer. He later emigrates to London, where he becomes inspired by the words of Sun Yat-sen and becomes his confidant during a 1911 revolution overthrowing China’s final dynasty. Eugene becomes not only a lawyer, but also a newspaper editor and a diplomat who trusted to interact with Chinese, Russian, British and American political leaders. Eugene’s story is the meat of this book; he is used as the main connection between feudal and modern China before the outbreak of World War II. Eugene’s son Jack, a journalist and artist, uses his talents to represent and explain the Marxist revolution to the outside world. His story is used as a bridge between the postwar rule of Chiang Kai-Shek and the Communist rule of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Jack is seized by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution of 1966; the author served as the translator during his interrogation. He is ordered to write a confession—“Go back three generations to see what crimes your family has committed against the revolution.” That later becomes the guiding inspiration for this story. I wish that had been the beginning, a prologue to this story about a world that I did not know. Return to the Middle Kingdom is richly detailed and it is a very relevant first-person history of China that no one else but Chen could write. It can also be valuable background for anyone of similar roots, or who is about to visit, reside, or do business in modern China. I must also believe that, given the author’s background, Return to the Middle Kingdom should also be considered an important scholarly work. But Return to the Middle Kingdom is a story that one must already know the history in order to appreciate Chen’s efforts. It is not the best story for an introductory course. Contact Stuart Nachbar at http://www.EducatedQuest.com , a blog on education politics, policy and technology or read about his first book, The Sex Ed Chronicle, a novel on education and politics in 1980 New Jersey, at http://www.SexEdChronicles.com . Tag it:

Last Updated ( Thursday, 23 October 2008 )

 

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