Volume 38, Number 13 · July 18, 1991
China on the Verge
By Jonathan D. Spence
To the People: James Yen and Village China
by Charles W. Hayford
Columbia University Press, 304 pp., $35.00
Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s
by David Strand
University of California Press, 364 pp., $37.50
The Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie, 1911–1937 l'homme
by Marie-Claire Bergère, translated by Janet Lloyd
Cambridge University Press/Editions de la Maison des Sciences de, 356 pp., $59.50
The Alienated Academy: Culture and Politics in Republican China, 1919–1937
by We-hsin Yeh
Council on East Asian Studies/Harvard University Press, 449 pp., $26.00
Bandits in Republican China
by Phil Billingsley
Stanford University Press, 375 pp., $42.50
During the play-off matches for the intercollegiate East China soccer title in the early 1920s, passions ran high. The president of Shanghai's prestigious Communications University was no less a soccer fan than anyone else, but he was also a rigorously trained and didactic Confucian scholar who demanded that his students observe the highest standards of deportment. He lectured them on ethics for an hour every single school day. There was no question of his being in the stands with the fans, especially not in the long traditional scholar's gown which he insisted on wearing for all university functions. Instead he had a telephone line installed, running from the soccer field to his presidential office. Kept informed of all goals scored by his own or the rival teams, he could cheer wildly or weep at the outcome in dignified seclusion. After the game was over he would emerge once more into the public eye, in order to praise or castigate his team.
Review, 7359 words
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