Volume 18, Number 5 · March 23, 1972
Who's Who in China
By Martin Bernal
In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West
by Benjamin Schwartz
Harvard University Press, 298 pp., $8.00
Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance
by Jerome Greider
Harvard University Press, 417 pp., $12.50
Ting Wen-chiang: Science and China's New Culture
by Charlotte Furth
Harvard University Press, 307 pp., $10.00
Kuo Mo-jo: The Early Years
by David Roy
Harvard University Press, 244 pp., $7.50
Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period
by Arthur Hummel
Paragon, 1,103 pp., $20.00
Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, Volume 1: Ai-Ch'u
edited by Howard Boorman, edited by Richard Howard
Columbia University Press, 471 pp., $25.00
Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, Volume 2: Dalai-Ma
edited by Howard Boorman, edited by Richard Howard
Columbia University Press, 481 pp., $25.00
Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, Volume 3: Mao-Wu
edited by Howard Boorman, edited by Richard Howard
Columbia University Press, 471 pp., $25.00
Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, Volume 4: Yang-Bibliography
edited by Howard Boorman, edited by Richard Howard
Columbia University Press, 418 pp., $35.00
Ku Chieh-kang and China's New History: Nationalism and the Quest for Alternative Traditions
by Laurence A. Schneider
University of California, 337 pp., $11.00
Biographic Dictionary of Chinese Communism, 1921-1965
by Donald Klein, by Anne B. Clark
Harvard University Press, two volumes, 1,283 pp., $30.00
Who's Who in Communist China
compiled by Union Research Institute (Hong Kong)
International Publications Service, two volumes pp., $30.00
Written Chinese is extremely difficult. Before the revolutions of the twentieth century, the literary language was a barrier protecting the Confucian elite. Anyone who could jump over that barrier by passing the official examinations immediately joined the ruling class. The strengths of written Chinese were its huge vocabulary and its enormous number of references and allusions. These could be mastered only by years of grinding study for which of course the poor had no facilities or leisure—though, as in America, the myth of equal opportunity was maintained by stressing a few extraordinary cases of poor boys reaching the top.
Review, 5273 words
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