Two Other Reviews on Yang's The World Turned Upside Down

choi

On Jan 27, 2021 I published here a posting titled "Red Guards of Cultural Revolution," about a book review on the Jan 9,2021 The Economist of
The World Turned Upside Down; A history of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Jan 19, 2021 (Chinese edition: 《天地翻覆──中国文化大革命史》（上、下）. Hong Kong: 天地图书有限公司, 2016).
Today I have two more reviews of the same book, the first by an Oxford professor and the second by an Indian in India. I can not speak for you, who may think the reviews are just so-so, on a topic you know inside out. We (book reviewers and I) are foreigners, who are mostly dumbstruck and incredulous.


(1) Rana Mitter, Truth and Daring in Retelling Mao's China. Financial Times, Feb 13, 2021
https://www.ft.com/content/8d664e6b-fb4e-4fa7-a84a-838c99b5b8bc

Note
(a)
(i) Rana Mitter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rana_Mitter
(ii) about himself:
Rana Mitter, Rana Mitter. Outlook (magazine; 1995- ; based in New Delhi; in English language: per en.wikipedia.org), Nov 4, 2013
https://magazine.outlookindia.com/story/rana-mitter/288274
(the first 1 1/2 sentences (the rest is placed behind paywall): "When I was 18, I took an entirely illogical decision which ended up shaping my life: I started to study Chinese. As the British-born son of Bengali parents, the decision to study Chinese was not an obvious one from the point of view of")
(iii) Indian name
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_name  空军政治部文工团(first sentence: "Indian names are based on a variety of systems and naming conventions, which vary from region to region")

(b) "A woman named Liu Suyuan 刘素媛 [1940-?], who served in the marvellously named 'Air Force Political Department Song and Dance Troupe' 空军政治工作部文工团 [下设: 歌舞团 etc] had developed a close relationship with Mao over a decade [entered 中南海 in 1958, when she was 18].  In May 1967, under attack from a radical faction denouncing her * * * The Cultural Revolution itself sits in a somewhat different place in the Chinese imagination to the Great Leap Forward. The great hunger is essentially a taboo subject within China; the Cultural Revolution is not. There have been several histories of the period published in China (all meticulously footnoted here [Yang's book]). * * * (Train travel was made free, allowing what Yang calls 'The Great Networking 大串联' of revolutionary youth to make their way across the country.) Yang also rightly stresses the deadly role of the PLA in worsening the violence. 'An army draws vitality from war,' he notes drily, 'and peace is the worst corrosive.' 军队的生命力在于战争,和平是对军队最强的腐蚀剂 * * * 'constitutional democracy is an effective system for applying checks and balances 权力制衡需要宪政民主.'

choi

(2) Pankaj Mishra, Struggle Sessions; What are Cultural Revolution's lessons for our current moment?  New Yorker, Feb 1, 2021 (under  "Books," meaning book review, here on several books).
https://www.newyorker.com/magazi ... -our-current-moment

Note:
(a)
(i) This review talked about
(A) The World Turned Upside Down. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Jan 19, 2021
(B) Tsering Woeser, Forbidden Memories; Tibet during the Cultural Revolution. Potomac Books, 2020.


(ii) Pankaj Mishra (1969- ; male; married another Indian Mary Mount in 2005; born, raised, educated (with both BA in commerce and MA in English) -- and still living -- in India: per author's own website)
(iii) The only photo (caption: "In 1968, the son of a purged official is publicly punished for defending his father. Photograph by Li Zhensheng [《黑龙江日报》记者李振盛] / Contact Press Images")
in this review showed 欧阳湘 (1940-1968; 黑龙江省委原书记欧阳钦之子) wrote a letter under pseunym 洪新建 on "68.11.24” (as the placard on his neck showed in the photo).

(b) "On September 24, 1970, the Rolling Stones interrupted their concert at the Palais des Sports in Paris to invite a French Maoist called Serge July onstage. * * * many writers and activists in the West who were opposed to the United States and its war in Vietnam were becoming fascinated with Mao Zedong, their earlier infatuation with Soviet-style Marxism having soured. * * * Editors at the influential French periodical Tel Quel [1960-1982; based in Paris; defined in English as 'as it is' or 'as is'] learned Chinese in order to translate Mao's poetry. * * * Mick Jagger launched into 'Sympathy for the Devil.' Western intellectuals and artists would have felt much less sympathy for the Devil had they heard about the ordeals of their counterparts in China, as described in 'The World Turned Upside Down' (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), a thick catalogue of gruesome atrocities, blunders, bedlam, and ideological dissimulation, by the Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng. Yang mentions a group of elderly writers in Beijing who, in August, 1966, three months [starting with Politburo's 五一六通知] after Mao formally launched the Cultural Revolution, were denounced as 'ox demons and snake spirits' (Mao's preferred term for class enemies) and flogged with belt buckles and bamboo sticks by teen-age girls. Among the writers subjected to this early 'struggle session' was the novelist Lao She, the world-famous author of 'Rickshaw Boy [骆驼祥子].' He killed himself the following day.  There were other events that month—'bloody August [红八月],' as it came to be called * * * students [led by 宋彬彬] savagely beat a teacher named Bian Zhongyun [卞仲耘 (1916 - Aug 5, 1966] and left her dying in a handcart."
(i)
(A) Palais des Sports
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_des_Sports
(B) French-English dictionary:
* palais (noun masculine; from Latin [noun neuter] palātium [palace]): "palace"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/palais
* des "contraction of de + les (of the)"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/des#French
   ^ For les, see French articles and determiners
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_articles_and_determiners
   (section 1 Articles, section 1.1 Definite article)
   In other words, les can be applied to plural of either noun masculine or noun feminine. In French, sport is noun masculine, whose plural is sports.
(ii) Sympathy for the Devil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy_for_the_Devil
(1968; "The working title of the song was 'The Devil Is My Name' * * * Jagger sings in first person narrative as the Devil, boasting his role in each of several historical atrocities. The singer then ironically demands the listener's courtesy towards him")
(iii) bedlam (n; First Known Use 1522; etymology): "a place, scene, or state of uproar and confusion"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bedlam
(iv) 牛鬼蛇神 出处: "唐·李贺《李贺集序》：'鲸吸鳌掷，牛鬼蛇神，不足为其虚荒诞幻也。 ' "
(v) handcart (n): "a cart drawn or pushed by hand"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/handcart

(c) reviewing another book: " 'Forbidden Memory' (Potomac [April 2020]; for subtitle, see Note (a)(i) above), by the Tibetan activist and poet Tsering Woeser [1966- ; Chinese name: 唯色], show that even Tibet, the far-flung region that China had occupied since 1950, did not escape the turmoil. * * * The photographs in Woeser's book were taken by her father [Tsering Dorje], a soldier in the Chinese military, and found by her after he died. * * * Mao's decrees, faithfully amplified by the People's Daily, which exhorted readers to 'sweep away the monsters and demons,' gave people license to unleash their id."
(i) University of Nebraska Press
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Nebraska_Press  
(table: Imprints including Potomac Books)

An imprints in a publishing company is akin to brands, catering to various consumers.
(ii) Tibetan name
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_name  
("Tibetan names typically consist of two juxtaposed elements..  Family names are rare except among those of aristocratic ancestry and then come before the personal name (but diaspora Tibetans living in societies that expect a surname may adopt one)./ table: Tsering = long life)
(iii) For "sweep away the monsters and demons," see

Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons
橫掃一切牛鬼蛇神
PeopleFor "sweep away the monsters and demons," see s Daily Editorial, June 1, 1966
(iv) Freud developed the theory of id, ego and super-ego.

(d) "Memoirs of the Cultural Revolution, first appearing in the nineteen-eighties, belong by now to a distinct nonfiction genre—from confessions by repentant former Red Guards (Jung Chang's 张戎 'Wild Swans 鸿,' Ma Bo's 马波 [1947- ] 'Blood Red Sunset 血色黄昏 [1988]') to searing accounts by victims (Ji Xianlin's 季羨林 [1911 – 2009] 'The Cowshed 牛棚杂忆 [1998]') to family sagas (Aiping Mu's 慕爱平 [1951- ; female] 'The Vermilion Gate 朱门 [2002]'). The period's outrages animate the work of many of China's prominent novelists, such as Wang Anyi 王安忆 [1954- ], Mo Yan, Su Tong 苏童 [pen name of 童忠贵 (1963- )], and, most conspicuously, Yu Hua 余华 [1960- ], whose two-volume novel 'Brothers' 兄弟 [2005 & 2006 for vols 1 & 2, respectively] includes an extended description of a lynching, with details that seem implausible but that are amply verified by eyewitness testimony."

(e) "ang provides the larger political backdrop to these granular [definition: finely detailed] accounts of cruelty and suffering. * * * With the Great Leap Forward, Mao had hoped to industrialize China by encouraging household steel production. With the Cultural Revolution, he seemed to sideline economic development in favor of a large-scale engineering of human souls and minds. * * * Mao's own hands were once so damaged by all the pressing of [Red Guards'] callow flesh that he was unable to write for days afterward.
(i) callow (adj)
https://www.lexico.com/definition/callow
(ii) If you stop here, you have read four fifths of the New Yorker review and may want to stop here. The rest of the review is inane.