Volume 39, Number 18 · November 5, 1992
Squaring the Chinese Circle
By Jonathan Mirsky
Chinese Roundabout: Essays in History and Culture
by Jonathan D. Spence
Norton, 400 pp., $24.95
The Cambridge History of China: Volume 15, The People's Republic Part 2: Revolutions Within the Chinese Revolution 1966–1982
edited by Roderick MacFarquhar, edited by John K. Fairbank
Cambridge University Press, 1,108 pp., $120.00
'China,' according to Lucien Pye, 'is a civilization pretending to be a state.'[1] This is an elegant formulation of an idea which eventually occurs to most people who have studied, read about, or traveled and lived in China. In the late sixteenth century the Jesuits adopted Chinese dress, and shelved some of their basic beliefs; so did some missionaries in 1900. When Owen Lattimore was married in 1926 in Peking he and his wife posed for a photograph in Chinese costume; so did William Empson when he taught there in the 1930s.
Review, 3805 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |