Volume 4, Number 10 · June 17, 1965
Down There on a Visit
By Martin Bernal
Report from a Chinese Village
by Jan Myrdal
Pantheon, 373 pp., $6.95
In many ways this is the book that everybody interested in China has been waiting for, a book describing what it feels like to be a peasant living through the Chinese Revolution. In the summer of 1962 Jan Myrdal, the thirty-year-old son of the famous Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, lived for a month in a Chinese village. The village Liuling is a small collection of man-made caves hollowed out of a soft slope set in the weirdly beautiful loess hills and gorges that cover much of Northwest China. With the help of two interpreters, the author spent nearly all his time talking with the villagers, and the social side of Report from a Chinese Village is the product of these conversations. From the leaders of the village organizations Jan Myrdal obtained considerable statistical information about village life. There are tables showing the annual accounts for 1961 of the village Labor Groups, Labor Brigade, and the local commune. The names, ages, and family relationships of most of the villagers are given and there are lists of the number of work points earned and wages received in grain and cash by each family. These data, though scattered throughout the book and made still more confusing by the lack of an index; still tell us a great deal about the social and economic structure of a Chinese village.
Review, 2035 words
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