Volume 36, Number 16 · October 26, 1989
Stories from the Ice Age
By Jonathan Mirsky
Spring Bamboo: A Collection of Contemporary Chinese Short Stories
compiled and translated by Jeanne Tai, with a foreword by Bette Bao Lord, an introduction by Leo Ou-fan Lee
Random House, 284 pp., $18.95
I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling
edited by Tani E. Barlow, with Gary J. Bjorge
Beacon Press, 361 pp., $24.95
Lapse of Time
by Wang Anyi, introduction by Jeffrey Kinkley
China Books and Panda Books (Beijing), 235 pp., $8.95 (paper)
Baotown
by Wang Anyi, translated by Martha Avery
Norton, 144 pp., $17.95
Since the Tiananmen Square killings it has become fashionable within the Chinese leadership to refer to dissident intellectuals as 'scum.' That was Mao's view, too. In 1942, the chairman, his armies besieged by both Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese army, took time off for zheng-feng, or rectification movement, in which he laid down rules for 'unclean' Chinese authors. Despite the official repudiation of Mao's literary views in 1983, his dead hand continues to terrify writers today.
Review, 4094 words
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