2 comments about The Will to Orthodoxy: A Critical Genealogy of Northern Chan Buddhism.

1. I think that someone must have thought "Lets take this old thesis, dress it up, and maybe we can make some money". There is really no reason for this book to exist. Almost all of the ideas and topics in this book (and more) are presented in much more depth in John R. McRae's "The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch'an Buddhism". In the acknowledgements, the author seems to describe his book as a phase in the historical progression of his thought. While admitting there is considerable overlap between his book and John McRae's, the author says "Unfortunately I was unable to rework my entire book to take into account all of the new data contributed by McRae. I only hope that by tossing this piece into the hopper of Chan history I may provide elements for some future synthesis." So basically, he just reprinted an old, outdated piece of research!? If you're interested in the Northern school of Chan, take your money and check out "The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch'an Buddhism". It's a bit dry, but it is by far the best book on the topic.



2. Although it is true that McRae produced an excellent work on early Chan, the decided lack of literature on the subject of pre-Hui neng Chan/Zen makes anything quite welcome. However Faure is unquestionably one of the best in the field, and, unlike McRae, who is "dry", Faure gives valuable insight in an entertaining and informative manner (not an easy task given the acedemic quality of the book). As an aspiring academic in the field of early Chan myself, I have found this book to be profoundly helpfull, and would recommend anyone interested in the subject to read both Faure and McRae.

1 comments about The Otherness of Self: A Genealogy of Self in Contemporary China.

1. This is an ambitious book that pushes the paradigm of anthropology beyond its more traditional study of a people's way of interpreting the world. Liu connects the epistemological project of culture to questions of ontology, and in so doing, explodes the possiblities of ethnology. He also neatly synthesizes a great deal of contemporary philosophical and anthropological thought in the process. For thinking readers.

5 comments about The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family.

1. Mai's book is an excellent way for American readers to understand the Vietnam war as well as Vietnamese culture, especially how they have reacted to French colonization, the American war period and the difficult choices that had to made about who to side with. It's a unique and important book that's gripping and important.



2. I bought this book prior to a vacation in Vietnam. This is painless history! Although the book is long (nearly 500 pages) and very heavy to carry on an airplane, it was worth it. I learned so much about the historical differences that led to the Vietnam war and the succeeding political situations. I feel really prepared now for this trip in terms of understanding the context for my travels both to Hanoi and to Saigon.
   If you want to get an understanding of the history of this country from prior to the French occupancy to the Communist era, I would recommend this book.



3. I highly recommend this book for all young 2nd generation Vietnamese-Americans, like myself, who want to learn about their family's culture and past. This book should be included in any Asian American Studies class or curriculum.
   Well done, Mrs. Duong-Elliot! Thank you for writing such an insightful, moving and educational story about your family and Vietnam. Not only did I learn more about the Vietnamese people, but I learn more about who I am.



4. The Sacred Willow is a book about Vietnam and it's history portrayed by the life of one Vietnamese family. Unlike most books about the war in Vietnam, this book offers the views of the Vietnamese themselves instead of the views of foreigners. Another important aspect is the fact that Elliot shows the opinons and values of both the people who support and are against the Viet Minh. This is done by the views of her family and the views of her sister Thang, who leaves to fight for the Viet Minh. While studying abroad Elliot is able to get an outside perspective and begins to feel a connection to the Viet Minh, at least to the point that she understands why they are willing to fight.
   
   I did enjoy this book becuase it directly tied into my history class, but if it was not for that I do not know if I would of truely enjoyed it. The book is fascinating, since it gives American readers the views of the Vietnamese that we were fighting for in the Vietnam War. Another plus, is the reader does not have to be familiar with Vietnamese history beacuse Elliot does an excellent job describing the historical events. However, the book is a little dry, a very long read, and a little bias toward the Viet Minh (Elliot did grow up in a family that strongly despised the communists). I would probably only recomened it for modern history lovers, those who have an appreciation for Vietnam or the Vietnamese War. The book is definitely not for leisure readers.



5. This is an extraordinary book by an extraordinary woman. Of all the Vietnam narratives I've read, this is the first to give us a detailed picture of life in a Vietnamese mandarin family, a milieu which most of us who were there never knew existed. Moreover, this is a history of Vietnam seen from all sides because Mrs. Elliott's family members were involved in all the events that shaped the modern history of her native land from the French occupation to today's united Vietnam under communist rule. She spares no details and some of them must've been very painful for her to write about, especially the foibles of certain prominent family members whom she describes objectively and without emotion, and with all their warts. That kind of honesty is refreshing in a book like this and frankly makes her subjects' vulnerably human in spite of their extraordinary accomplishments. No mistake about it, the Duong family produced some extraordinary individuals but in Mrs. Elliott's narrative they put their robes on the same way everyone else does.
   
   Mrs. Elliott is also the author of the magisterial RAND IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. She was a RAND employee in the 1960s working as an interrogator and translator in the Vietcong Motivation and Morale Study commissioned by the Department of Defense. This effort produced hundreds of in-depth interviews with Viet Cong and North Vietnamese POWs and defectors which today are a priceless archive of the ordinary communist fighter's life in the jungle. When Lee Lanning and I wrote INSIDE THE VC AND THE NVA we relied heavily on these interviews some of which were conducted by Mrs. Elliott herself. We used other RAND reports, particularly "Documents of an Elite Viet Cong Delta Unit: The Demolition Platoon of the 514th Battalion," authored by Mrs. Elliott and her husband, David.
   
   If only we'd paid closer attention to what the Elliotts and their colleagues were finding out about our communist enemy in Vietnam we might've gained valuable insights. And, as she very perceptively points out in this book, if we'd only done a similar study on our South Vietnamese ally we might've taken a different course in Vietnam than the one that led to disaster and the vast diaspora Mrs. Elliott describes in this book.
   
   Mrs. Elliott was only a child when the first Indochina War ended. She grew up in a privileged environment, went to the best schools, was educated at Georgetown at the American taxpayer's expense, married an American intellectual, and was safe here in the States when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese juggernaut. She never knew the ordinary people of Vietnam, the soldiers, the bar girls, the prostitutes, the street vendors, the street urchins, the rural villagers, not like the average GI and if he was an infantryman, he knew the Vietnamese countryside better than this author ever could, better, in fact, than many of his communist enemies fresh off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Of her siblings none were killed in the war.
   
   But when the Duongs fled their country in 1975, those who didn't stay behind to experience concentration camps or victory in the ranks of the VC and the NVA, they came with nothing except a will to survive and provide for their children. A hundred-year membership in the mandarinate was worthless to these new immigrants. We should never forget it's people like them who've made this country what it is.
   
   Yes, Mrs. Elliott reveals in this book that she shared the anti-war views of the American intelligentsia which at the time outraged me and if I'd have met her back then I don't think I'd have liked her -- I'd have considered her a communist stooge. But she was right that the way we & our South Vietnamese ally were pursuring that war would end in failure and while she had close relatives who were devoted communists, she's not one herself, she's Vietnamese and that is a BIG difference.
   
   My son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren have all been back to Vietnam. It's not the same country it was in 1975. Mrs. Elliott doesn't beat you over the head with this fact, but it's clear and one might wonder who really won that war. My barber, a Vietnamese immigrant, wasn't even born when I first went there & he was but a baby when I left. That, Mrs. Elliott tells us in this book, is how we come to terms with the past, by living through and beyond it. Her family did it and so can the rest of us.

5 comments about The Tarasov Saga: From Russia Through China to Australia.

1. I was involved in a novel when I purchased a copy ot the Tarasov Saga. I intended to keep it in reserve for when I finished the novel.
   Out of curiosity I started reading the Tarasov Saga. Once I started the novel had to wait. I became involved with the story of a struggling mother and at the same time gathered a good understanding of what Russia must have been like at that time.
   The stort of foreign groups living in designated areas in China was also fascinating. The numerous photographs in the booked also helped me. I often found myself referring back to the photographs and maps to help my understanding. A good read



2. I found the book most interesting especially because of the historical insights that the author shared about life in Russia, China and finally in Australia. The contrasts between life in the Far East and life now in Australia for Gary and his family is amazing and it is wonderful to note the appreciation he has for the differences.
   I always love stories about people and what they have coped with in their lives. Certainly Gary Nash will have inherited some of the strong and stoic qualities that his grandmother showed.
   I found the book very enjoyable to read and the family tree was very useful to continuously revert back to as the story progressed. It has also been written in a very positive way and I would guess that this is why the Tarasov family managed to get to Australia and be successful.
   Most enjoyable - well worth reading!



3. The Tarasov Saga is a very absorbing book, not only because of its account of a remarkable journey over 25 years of the extended Tarasov family, initially fleeing from Russia through China and the Phillipines to Australia, but also for the historical perspective of life in Russia and China in the first half of the 20th century.
   I have known the author, both as a work colleague and a friend for over 30 years but, Gary being a very private person, all I knew of his background was that he was of White Russian origin and had lived in China before coming to Australia! The to read this book and discover the astonishing story of all that happened from the time of the Russian Revolution and its effects on the Tarasovs, individually and collectively, until the first of them arrived in Australia in 1949, made for compelling reading.I am not qualified to comment on Gary's literary style or technique, but the way he has portrayed each member of the family, their strengths and their weaknesses brought them to life so that, not only were they believable, but one could visualise their individual contributions to this saga.
   This book is about courage, determination and resilience, and what can be achieved by people who are single-minded and motivated to seek a better life after many years of deprivation
   and hardship.
   In particular, the reader is left in no doubt of the author's great affection and admiration for his Grandmother Aida and her monumental efforts to ensure that the family survived their epic journey and, bar one member, all be reunited in Australia.
   I thoroughly commend this book which is not only an enjoyable read but in an age where the refugee problem is a world-wide one, provides an understanding of the hardships and traumas that constantly confront refugees on the move.
   It is an intensely human story which reinforces basic values and beliefs, in an era where many consider these things to be unimportant.
   It would be nice to think that an enterprising producer might think that there is enough meat and drama in The Tarasov Saga to provide the basis for a film or TV series. It certainly has all the ingredients.



4. This book details the adventures of a large family as they seek safe haven from communism. In the beginning of the book, the author's mother and father are living in Czarist Russia, where his father is an officer in the army just prior to the outbreak of World War I. The small family grows to five children during the war. As the revolution begins to take hold, the father joins the loyalist White Russians and is dragged further and further east with them. His mother is left to manage alone with the five children. As it became clear that, as White Russians, they were not welcome in the Soviet Union, the mother decides to make her way east with the children, although she had no money and only a vague idea of where her husband might be. After a series of misadventures in which she is forced to leave the children behind, she eventually finds her husband and gets all five children back with her in a city in China that had a large Russian refugee population. The entire family made its home in China for the next twenty years, until a second communist revolution made them refugees once again.

   The story is quite well written, with amazing recall of details from long ago adventures. The stories describing everyday life in the Russian refugee communities of pre-Communist China provide a fascinating glimpse into a very little known way of life. On the one hand, it is amazing that the entire large family was able to make it out of Russia and then out of China, but on the other hand, it was precisely because they had so many people working together in the family that made it possible.




5. If this were fiction it would sometimes be unbelievable, but it is a real life story of a remarkable family. Gary Nash captures the strong spirit of survival that infused his relatives in the difficult historical times of the Russian Revolution and Civil War. The mother's harrowing search for her children in a worn-torn land defies description, but Nash manages to write of it with sympathy but not sentimentality. The family escapes from Russia into China and when, finally, it seems that all their efforts have led to a 'normal' life, their adopted country in invaded by Japanese forces. A sojourn in a 'Displaced Person's Camp' in the Philippines follows, but finally, their journey to Australia gives them the new, settled life they had traversed the world to find. Natasha Lands Down Under

2 comments about China and Historical Capitalism: Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge (Studies in Modern Capitalism).

1. The book is a good read and highly recommended, but there is room to update us on technology's impact on culture and society in China today.

   Why did the development of capitalism and technology fail in China? Does it matter? Has the West trumped the deck in favour of itself through selective interpretation of events? China and Historical Capitalism tells us it is more important to look beyond finding reasons in order to find out what actually happened in China after the fork in the road of economic development.

   The essays are reflections of current thinking on the 'post-Needham' project by well established scholars using, if I can stretch the terminology, post-marxist analytical tools and language. Joseph Needham, and his lifetime work on Science and Civilisation in China, is, of course, the backdrop for the essays. The chronology of the essays begins with the development of European capitalism and is completed with the identification of a market economy in pre-modern China.

   My favorite essay is that of Francesca Bray, "Towards a critical history of non-Western technology." Perhaps it is because I read her book, The Rice Economies of Asia (University of California Press, 1986). But it is also because she is probably one of the more qualified persons to bridge Needham's work with post-Needham work given that she produced Volume VI of Needham's series. Parts of her essay deal with basic definitions of technology, economy and capitalism. In essence it provides clear guideposts to reinterpret Needham's work by showing the development of technology beyond the cut-off period that signals the rise of the West. The following chapter, by R. Bin Wong, goes on to narrate the development of China's market economy, where Europe's economic development is the usual topic of study.

   Having experienced the development of the internet over the last half decade, one can't help but look back at the exercises in this book as also partly misguided. The authors state at the beginning that they do not address current economic development in Asia, but instead focus on how capitalism "has been conceived as a European social formation" and how capitalism, "as a world system has shaped knowledge of China." Yet, so often, the assumptions that underlie their uses of terms such as 'capitalism' result in freezing time to suit their needs and to leave the West in a category of cultural and social development that built the world outside into an image of what it wanted to see. They do not to see capitalism and technology as systems that can develop beyond their experience to date. Neither do they consider current (or even recent) interaction between technological development and society in China. Certainly, it is another large topic. But a peak at the issues would help.

   Ultimately, the reality they build comes with its own set of distortions. Perhaps its the nature of the beast, but it would be nice to leave the door open and say: "Hey, Needham, Weber and all the social scientists and thinkers pre-Foucault or Pre-Habermas, etc. just had a different set of problems than we have today. ... But we recognize that we are also missing part of the picture. ... and here is where we need to focus next."

   (This is short version of the review that excludes chapter summaries)

   Charles de Trenck is based in Hong Kong and published "Red Chips and the Globalisation of China's Enterprises" in 1997




2. Much has happened since the first review. Yet the conclusion remains much the same. There is the same need to get at the roots of Capitalism in China, past and present.
   
   Capitalism in the US has been turned on its head by Wall Street. China, meanwhile, has in some respects done a better job of guiding its growth by using limited market economy tools.
   
   Modern China still faces challenges in seeing a market economy develop fully. And pollution has proven to be a tremendous concern for all. And yet its report card from a Capitalist perspective is perhaps better than that of the US.

1 comments about Best Chinese Names.

1. I bought this book to try to find a Chinese name for my baby. My husband is Chinese and speaks Cantonese, but this book is Mandarin Chinese so he couldn't read much of it. Don't buy this unless you can read (and speak) Mandarin Chinese or it will be much too difficult to understand.

1 comments about In Search of Your Asian Roots : Genealogical Research on Chinese Surnames.

1. In Search of Your Asian Roots: Genealogical Research on Chinese Surnames appeared some time ago but deserves ongoing recommendation as a unique coverage - one of the few - to focus on the special challenges of researching Asian archives. Names and titles are listed in both Chinese and English, discussing the origins of some six hundred surnames and adding in Chinese history which traces the changes to these surname styles over the centuries. It's simply an essential 'must have' reference for any conducting more than a casual investigation into Asian family history.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch

1 comments about Blue and White Transfer-Printed Pottery (Shire Library).

1. I was dissapointed in this book. I bought it hoping for a good guide to identifying tranferware patterns. It has a lot of history, a large section on how the transfers and copper plates were created - this took up about 1/2 the book. The second half of the book had some more history about the different manufacturers, and some history about how the patterns and tastes changed over the years. There were actually very few examples of the different patterns - maybe about 40 different designs were listed, which is not a lot considering how many hundreds of different designs were produced during that time. No prices or values.
   
   This book is good for the history and background. But not for identification.

5 comments about Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism (Philip E. Lilienthal Book in Asian Studies).

1. Separating fact from fiction in history is problematic at best. Religious history is especially difficult as there are many stakeholders propogating certain lines of belief and practice. McRae's book strips away much of the mythology of the development of Chan/Zen from the time of Bodhidharma through to the Song Dynasty (ca. 950-1300) in China. This demythologizing is sure to upset some Zen practioners and teachers whose faith in Zen Buddhism is intimately tied to an idealised version of Zen's history.
   McRae not only presents a refreshing view of the Chan lineage charts and their role in the development of Zen's history, but also gives a detailed analysis of the Northern/Southern Schools split and the development of "encounter dialogues", which laid the foundation for koans. Along the way, he takes a swipe at Heinrich Dumoulin's interpretation of Zen history, the Platform Sutra as history (it never happened), and even the idea that Chan was a distinct and separate Buddhist school in ancient China. For those whose faith is based on these colourful but historically inaccurate myths, this book will be troubling and thought-provoking.
   McRae and other academics in the field are providing a valuable service to Buddhism's migration from the East to the West and books such as this one should be required reading in Zen centres around the world. McRae tackles the issues with a light touch and even non-experts in the field should have little difficulty in reading this. I highly recommend this book to all who are interested in Zen's true history.
   (...)



2. Studies of this type were perhaps inevitable. Following in the footsteps of Dr.Hu Shih, John McRae questions the 'orthodox' in-terpretation of Ch'an (Zen) history. Like many others, however, I feel that he has made too much of certain arguments. Some things may be less than clear, about the early Ch'an tradition and its geneologies etc. However, the primary sources which shaped the Ch'an tradition - the T'ang masters, were very real people - and, for the most part - what has come down to us today - in their records, is a faithful reflection of what they had to teach.
   
   John McRae makes much of 'sectarian' identities - but, did the T'ang masters encourage people to cling to such things? Masters like Ma-tsu and Shih-t'ou used to send their disciples back and forth, between each other's temples. Like Hu-shih, John McRae is keen to make it known that figures such as Hui-neng were made to bolster an 'ideological' position but, in actual fact, Hui-neng's Altar Sutra includes the story of his encounter with Yung-chia, a joint T'ien-tai/Ch'an master. Given John McRae's position, we should expect to find a 'triumphalist' account of Ch'an here - but, it actually acknowledges that Yung-chia was enlightened - and that he could hold his own - with Hui-neng. So - where's the obsession with 'sectarian' identities? The Ch'uan Teng Lu (Transmission of the Lamp) - technically a 'Ch'an-school' document, contains the records of several T'ien-tai masters.
   
   John McRae dismisses almost everything about Hui-neng as a fiction- but, if he cares to visit to Pao-lin temple one day, not far from Canton, he will find Hui-neng's body, seated in the meditation posture. It has been there since 713, interestingly enough - in proximity to the body of an Indian master, who had predicted Hui-neng's birth and future career. Are the Buddhists who venerate this place - misguided fools? When it comes to it, the Ch'an school has not occupied the narrow horizons suggested in John McRae's account. You will find people practicing 'Pure Land meditation in Ch'an temples - and Master Yung-Ming wrote his monumental 'Tsung Ching Lu' (Record of the Source-Mirror), helping to explicate how all Buddhist teachings - as 'upaya' can be harmonised in the 'One Mind.' This affords a perspective quite different to that presented in John McRae's account. By default, perhaps, people now discriminate - and cling to sectarian identities. But is there a single T'ang master - on record, telling us to 'cling' to anything?



3. McRae is truly an engaging scholar. Not only are his topics intriguing, but his writing style is smooth, accessible, and clear. Seeing Though Zen was a solid treatment of commonly misunderstood aspects of Chan (chinese zen). He fills the reader in on important aspects of the development of Chan without an over-burdening assessment the factors involved (that's what the bibliography is for), but he also treats the major 20th-century scholarship on Zen which accounts for these misunderstandings. I would have liked more of a "step into the beyond" in the conclusion, but I guess I'll have to wait for the Shen-hui work.



4. As a Zen priest who is also an academic, I am frequently frustrated both by scholarly books on religion that dismiss practitioners' perspectives, and by religiously oriented books that accept religious claims uncritically. In Seeing Through Zen, John McRae synthesizes a great deal of recent scholarship on Ch'an (Zen) and shows that many of its central claims -- an unbroken lineage of patriarchs, the biographies of key figures such as Bodhidharma and the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, a "golden age" of iconoclastic masters during the Tang Dynasty -- are not "true" in the modern historical sense. At the same time, McRae's first rule of Zen studies is: "It's not true, therefore it's more important." His careful scholarship is balanced by sensitivity to the religious meanings and the institutional value of these myths for Ch'an/Zen practitioners. I highly recommend this book to academic students and religious practitioners of Zen.
   The book opens with four axioms for Zen studies that can be applied usefully to almost any historical study. The subsequent analysis focuses on the Ch'an lineage and the literature of "encounter dialogue" (koans). McRae helps readers to understand the content of Ch'an myth and doctrine, the process by which it developed, and the ways it shaped the religious identities of institutions and individual practitioners.
   He cautions readers not to accept portrayals of heroes or villains at face value, but to look beneath the rhetoric to what's at stake in their portrayals: whose interests are being served, and how? He also cautions against assuming that the more precise a Zen story is, in details of place and time, the earlier it is likely be. In fact, the opposite is more likely. The details of Bodhidharma's life, for example, accumulated gradually over a thousand years. His identity was continually reinvented by successive generations of practitioners, according to their religious identities and ideals. Likewise, the teachings of many great Tang Dynasty masters were attributed to them retrospectively by later generations of students. This does not mean, however, that the mytho-poetic accounts are worthless. They tell us about the concerns and aspirations of the people who developed them, and help us to think more carefully about the religious claims of our own era and institutions.
   Western Zen is often built on misunderstandings of the tradition, in part because of the vast divide between our culture and that of Song Dynasty China, when many elements of Zen tradition took shape. For modern practitioners, it is not possible to do a careful and thoughtful job of interpreting Zen tradition for our own circumstances if we accept traditional stories unquestioningly in a literal, fundamentalist way. McRae offers helpful resources for re-thinking the tradition.
   The book does have some limitations: it pays almost no attention to gender; and it focuses almost entirely on texts, rather than on, say, archaeology, religious objects, or art, all of which tell us something about how religious traditions were actually lived. The focus on texts is a bias of western Buddhist studies that has been critiqued in recent decades, because religious literature may tell us more about what elites thought practitioners should do and believe, than about what practitioners actually did. McRae also might have drawn more connections between Indian and Chinese traditions: the question-and-answer format of koan literature, for example, seems reminiscent of The Questions of King Milinda.
   Despite these constraints, Seeing Through Zen is an engaging, accessible, highly informative book that demonstrates both rigorous scholarship and sympathy for the people he studies. This is a difficult balance, and McRae accomplishes it with flair.



5. In this book John McRae intends to write a history of Chan Buddhism in a manner different from his predecessors. He begins with a short list of rules he has come up with for studying Zen. These rules involve reading stories for content instead of truth, being untrusting of lineage assertions, taking facts and details as tell-tale signs of inaccuracy, and reading stories through realism. These rules create the basis for how he will write the rest of the book, and help lead him to his conclusion and main point at the end of the work. He takes the entire book to lead up to his main point, which is finally stated in full in the last chapter, "Climax Paradigm". In this chapter he pieces together all of the history and stories he has told throughout the book to claim that it was in fact the Song-dynasty instead of the Tang (which most writers assert) that was the climax and ultimate stability of Chan.
   
   Not being a scholar on Chan or really any other Asian history, I cannot evaluate McRae's conclusions and assertions based on historical accuracy. I wish to merely look at whether he follows his own rules which he laid out before the book began. For this we will need a good break-down of what he does in his first five chapters, the ones leading up to his argument and conclusion. In chapter one he discusses Chan lineage and how to properly use it to view Chan history. One of his biggest claims in this section is that we must avoid the "string of pearls fallacy" (McRae 9), which means not telling simply in terms of a list of important people and what they did. He says we need to look at the bigger picture of ideas and overall changes.
   
   In the second and third chapters he talks about Chan in different historical time periods and the developments and changes made during those times. He discusses which people were important to that time and what they did. The fourth chapter diverges from this slightly, in that it follows one type of structure in Chan, which is encounter dialogue. He follows this type of practice through the people who developed it, and the ways it was used with each person and time period. In the fifth chapter he discusses "Zen and the Art of Fund-Raising", which really turns out to be a discussion of the political connections that allowed Chan to flourish above other forms of Buddhism in the Song-dynasty.
   
   I think McRae's final chapter did a great job of showing Chan Buddhism and a different light than previous writers (at least based on what he says other writers did). He shows reasons why the Song-dynasty was the peak of Chan's influence, power, and stability with specific reason as well as larger concepts. His argument is well-formed and coherent. My problem, however, is with the first five chapters of the work. For the most part, he does not even follow his own rules when writing. He repeatedly gives specific details in his stories, which he originally claims implies inaccuracy. In addition, he takes the time to explain the "string of pearls fallacy" and then commits this very crime throughout the book. The simple fact is that there is no way to tell a history without talking about the individual important people involved. It seems that he was simply trying to make his book appear different from others at the beginning in order to make his argument at the end stronger. This is unnecessary; his argument is already strong, and he does not to prove himself to anyone by trying to make the rest of his book appear new and innovative as well.

5 comments about Soong Dynasty.

1. A very intriguing look at the power behind the power in China before the Communist takeover. Justice was definitely denied for the Chinese people whose national bank reserves were looted by this family. What is more enraging to learn from this book is the blatant robbery of U.S. foreign aid cash by this Soong family and the Chiang Kaishek regime, which was the most corrupt government in the world. I guessed Harry Truman said it in the most poignant way: "..the Soong is nothing but a bunch of thieves.." And I agree with him. It is is sad that all the loots were never returned to the people of China. The Soong represented the worst of the Chinese in that era which were greed, power hunger, blind ambitions, criminal behaviors and worst of all China was run by the de facto criminal organization behind generalissimo Chiang Kaishek.



2. This book tells the story of Charlie Soong' children, each of whom connected with a part of China's transition into the modern world at the beginning of the 20th century. Wonderfully told.



3. Seagrave's view of pre-World War II Chinese history consists of equal parts of conspiracy and corruption. These elements are certainly present in Chinese history, but Seagrave's presentation is so biased, confused, and poorly documented that no one should accept his account without careful research.
   
   For conspiracy, the most notable claims are that the Kuang-hsu emperor was poisoned (116), that the Dowager Empress Tz'u-hsi was poisoned (116), that Yuan Shikai was poisoned (text on 162 says uremia, footnote on 480 says "Such medical diagnoses were suspicious at best. Was it ever possible, organically, for a Borgia to die a natural death?"), that Charlie Soong was poisoned (142-3): "The facts surrounding Charlie Soong's death are obscure... the possibility of foul play has always existed... Euphemistically, stomach cancer was as common in revolutionary Shanghai as lead poisoning was in Chicago and Marseille." Seagrave goes on like this for almost a page in an exceptionally tendentious passage. There is of course zero documentation for all of these claims.
   
   In a way though, these claims are almost trivial. It makes no difference to Seagrave's narrative whether these people were poisoned or not. A much more essential point is the central role that Seagrave claims the Green Gang played. Unfortunately, Seagrave's account of the Green Gang has many problems. Brian G. Martin, whose book "The Shanghai Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime" is probably the best account of the Green Gang in English, says that Seagrave's account, "with its conspiratorial view of Chinese history in the 1920s and 1930s and of Jiang Jieshi's rise to power, sacrifices historical fact for sensationalist effect." (2)
   
   This is not an overstatement. One of the strangest things in "The Soong Dynasty" is how Seagrave identifies the well-known Green Gang boss Chang Hsiao-lin as a member not of the Green Gang, but of the "Blue Gang". The Chinese name of the "Green Gang" was "qing bang," with the word qing referring indifferently to both green and blue. Thus many early accounts of the Gang refer to them as the "Blue Gang." The Comintern representative Sneevliet regularly calls them this in his reports. The "Blue Gang" is the "Green Gang" and the "Green Gang" is the "Blue Gang." How Seagrave confused one gang into two I have no idea.
   
   Rather than rendering his account more difficult, however, this seems to open a door for Seagrave. Huang Chin-jung, Tu Yueh-sheng, and Chang Hsiao-lin were the Shanghai gangster troika, mentioned in numerous books. What Seagrave does is largely replace Chang Hsiao-lin, the Green Gang boss, with Chang Ching-chiang, one of the "four elder statesmen" of the Kuomintang, and a close advisor to Chiang Kai-shek. Thus Huang, Tu, and Chang Ching-chiang appear in various combinations throughout the book. Chang is an intimate of Tu (161), a business partner of Tu (163-4), a kidnapper like Tu and Huang (212), and so on. This is how Seagrave grafts Tu and the Green Gang onto Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT. Was Chang Ching-chiang really an important member of the Green Gang? He is mentioned in Brian Martin's book only once, as someone Tu and Huang were appealing to to continue the Shanghai purge in 1927. This is in contrast to Chang Hsiao-lin (Zhang Xiaolin), who occupies large chunks of Martin's book.
   
   Putting aside the conspiratorial events, the historical events Seagrave attempts to recount are so confused and contradictory that C. Martin Wilbur calls "The Soong Dynasty" "a travesty of a book from a historical viewpoint." (Wilbur's "China in My Life", p. 285). This is very bad for people who read "The Soong Dynasty" for history, rather than scandal or speculation.
   
   Anachronistic (or at least highly confusing) statements are a major part of this problem. A striking example is Seagrave's account of the Western Hills meeting (November 1925). He first quotes Isaacs' description of the goal of the meeting as being to "Ally with Chiang to overthrow Wang (Ching-wei)." Why overthrow Wang? According to Seagrave, Wang was "too weak to prevent a Communist coup. He had just convened a Second Party Congress that placed most of the critical departments of the southern government in the hands of the CCP and other leftists" (210). It seems to me a reasonable interpretation of this is that Seagrave thinks that first Wang convened the second party congress and then the Western Hills reactionaries decided to dump him. But the Second Party Congress was held in January 1926, after the Western Hills meeting. Why overthrow Wang? Try Wilbur's book "The Nationalist Revolution in China" (30-32). Wilbur gives a clear discussion of the factionalism facing the KMT at this point. Anachronisms aside, Seagrave is lost, complaining in his footnotes that these are "murky developments." (484)
   
   An even more startling discussion is Seagrave's account of the "First Shanghai Uprising" (217). Apparently Seagrave got this from Harold Isaacs' "Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution", but compare Seagrave with Isaacs (p. 131 of the 1961 edition), or even better, with "Missionaries of Revolution" by Wilbur and How (p. 328-329). Seagrave's account is simply wrong, adding in the Green Gang with no sources, misidentifying people, misunderstanding the circumstances, claiming "large numbers" of casualties and a blow to the Communists, where Wilbur and How list documents that give the casualties as 10 people killed, and Isaacs, the champion of the labor groups involved, dismisses the event with the remark "The incident passed almost unnoticed on the fringe of events."
   
   "The Soong Dynasty" does provide some interesting information in the earlier part of the book on Charlie Soong, father of the six Soong children. In particular, Charlie's success as a businessman and his work on behalf of Sun Yat-sen has been neglected, and there is still no extended account of these available today. Unfortunately, most of Seagrave's materials on these aspects is also poorly documented. Thus Seagrave claims that Soong joined the Hung-men Society ("the Red Gang") "shortly before the 1888 Chinese New Year celebration" (57), but gives no source for this. All of his comments about Charlie's activities and the Red Gang: that he was introduced by his brothers-in-law (58), that he printed the Gang's secret papers (57), that Gang members provided capital for his business ventures (60), that he bought the building for his printing shop through the Gang (61), that the steamship Charlie and his family fled to Japan on in 1912 was owned by the Gang (130), are all unsourced.
   
   It is a pity that Seagrave's book turns out to be so unreliable; it would be nice if there were one book that covered the people and events of this period, but I don't think there is one single work that does this. Wilbur's books are solid historical accounts, and Brian Martin's book has excellent documentation, though the Green Gang, like the Mafia, is murky water. As for the history of the Soongs, despite Seagrave's massive onslaught, the field remains barren.



4. Really, this is the worst sort of hatchet job by a man obsessed with Chiang Kai-shek and the evil he is thought to have done. Seagrave has written some truly awful stuff, generally based on one twisted bit of history, and generally made toxic by his loathing for CKS, the Soong family, Claire Chennault, and indeed anyone and anything associated with Nationalist China.
   
   For a more recent, scholarly, and honest portrayal of CKS and those who surrounded him, see the excellent The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China (Belknap Press), a recent biography by Jay Taylor, published by a division of Harvard University Press.
   
   As for this book, I give it two stars instead of the one it probably deserves, because as other reviewers have pointed out, it is an entertaining read. The same of course can be said by anything from Nora Roberts.



5. There were many things I liked about this book, and a few that I did not, and it all adds up to a decent rating. I rate this book 3.5, not 4 stars. It's better than a 3 in my opinion, but just is not quite a 4. Having read 'Dragon Lady' by this very same author and finding it very well-written and researched, I have to say that I found this book to be somewhat disappointing. It was not quite the same caliber as 'Dragon Lady', since this book has more speculation, and actually says negative things about Tzu Hsi/Cixi even though in 'Dragon Lady' such suggestions are shot down.
   
   This book was a long one, and I found some parts plodding. However, it gave me a good overview on Chinese history and what happened between the KMTs and the Communists. Having read several historical Chinese novels set through various times and ages (Empress Orchid, the Last Empress, Peony in Love among others, as well as biographies and auto-biographies (Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Mah, Red Azalea by Anchee Min), I can honestly say that the knowledge of Chinese history in here is rather informative, and you will learn a lot about China itself as long as you have the patience to actually read it all.