China Witness: Voices From A Silent Generation
The Age
Saturday October 18, 2008
China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation
Xinran Chatto & Windus, $34.95 THE WORLD MAY WELL stare agog at the woken giant of modern China but what this compelling collection of interviews does in vivid, recounted detail, is document just what it took to get there. The human cost that is and the utter loss of the private life so that everything could be channelled into the political. Xinran, who also wrote The Good Women of China, has strung together nine interviews that are particular in focus but that form an epic when viewed as a whole. She looks at the "silent" generation, men and women who joined the People's Liberation Army in the 1930s, fought the Nationalists, were part of the Long March, and made the republic as well as making and suffering under the mind-bogglingly idiotic and barbaric Cultural Revolution. These survivors now sit gazing upon the thing they created, knowing what the price was in a way that the current generation does not. Whether recollecting triumph or tragedy, Xinran's "witnesses" are calm, composed and circumspect.
© 2008 The Age