Volume 28, Number 13 · August 13, 1981
China: How Much Dissent?
By Jonathan D. Spence
A Madman of Ch'u: The Chinese Myth of Loyalty and Dissent
by Laurence A. Schneider
University of California Press, 270 pp., $21.75
Dissent in Early Modern China: Ju-lin Wai-Shih and Ch'ing Social Criticism
by Paul S. Ropp
University of Michigan Press, 356 pp., $24.00
China's Intellectuals: Advise and Dissent
by Merle Goldman
Harvard University Press, 276 pp., $22.00
Beijing Street Voices: The Poetry and Politics of China's Democracy Movement
by David S.G. Goodman
Marion Boyars, 206 pp., $20.00
In the year 278 BC an aristocrat and poet named Qu Yuan took his own life by throwing himself into the waters of the Milo River. Qu Yuan had once been the powerful adviser to the ruler of the Chu kingdom, specializing in legal affairs and diplomacy, but the monarch was tricked into hating Qu Yuan and rejected his advice. Driven into exile in southern Chu (south of the Yangtze, in the general area now known as Hunan province), Qu led a wandering life as a poet and visionary, remaining loyal in memory to the ruler who had ousted him. When his ruler was killed and the Chu capital destroyed by northern enemies, Qu committed suicide.
Review, 4675 words
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