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| View Larger Image | Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China
by John Pomfret
| | List Price: | $26.00 |  | | 7 New starting at: | $7.83 | | 7 Used starting at: | $5.45 | | | | | Sales Rank: | 464054 | | Studio: | Henry Holt and Co. | | | Binding: | Hardcover | | Number Of Pages: | 336 | | Publication Date: | August 08, 2006 | | Publisher: | Henry Holt and Co. |
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Product Description
“A highly personal, honest, funny and well-informed account of China’s hyperactive effort to forget its past and reinvent its future.”—The New York Times Book Review As one the first American students admitted to China after the communist revolution, John Pomfret was exposed to a country still emerging from the twin tragedies of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Crammed into a dorm room with seven Chinese men, Pomfret contended with all manner of cultural differences, from too-short beds and roommates intent on glimpsing a white man naked, to the need for cloak-and-dagger efforts to conceal his relationships with Chinese women. Amidst all that, he immersed himself in the remarkable lives of his classmates.
Beginning with Pomfret’s first day in China, Chinese Lessons takes us down the often torturous paths that brought together the Nanjing University History Class of 1982: Old Wu’s father was killed during the Cultural Revolution for the crime of being an intellectual; Book Idiot Zhou labored in the fields for years rather than agree to a Party-arranged marriage; and Little Guan was forced to publicly denounce and humiliate her father. As Pomfret follows his classmates from childhood to adulthood, he examines the effect of China’s transition from near-feudal communism to first-world capitalism. The result is an illuminating report from present-day China, and a moving portrait of its extraordinary people.
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CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 42 reviews)
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What happened AFTER the Cultural Revolution? 
Chinese Lessons scratched a persistent itch for me: How in the world did the participants and victims of the Cultural Revolution move beyond it?
Several books by victims have graphically illustrated what it was like to be a victim of this horrifying period in Chinese history. (Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng and Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong, two very different but equally powerful memoirs, are my favorites to date.) But this is the first I've read that includes the other side and explores the aftermath.
What was it like to be a perpetrator, a Red Guard, and what kinds of lives did they (and the survivors) build when the government once again shifted and Cultural Revolution rather suddenly ground to a halt? How did they get from "there" to the often cut-throat capitalism-with-Chinese-characteristics of today's China?
The individual stories of John Pomfret's classmates (and his own) bring the ensuing three decades to life in a readable and thought-full way, while taken as a whole, the book's overarching viewpoint that the Communist party is still committed to doing anything necessary to remain in power(mainly, suppression of people, ideas, and its own failures) gives credence to his conclusion that the Chinese system today is on shaky ground (all those peasants who haven't gotten a piece of the pie yet!) and the biggest story of the 21st century could be China's failure rather than its success.
Personally, I hope that doesn't happen, as I've been there and share Pomfret's fascination with the sheer dogged determination of the people to not just survive, but thrive. Still, I can't deny his thesis.
Last words: Very readable, couldn't put it down once I started reading, learned a lot, highly recommended.
November 02, 2008 | |
Chinese Lessons
This book was suggested reading for a trip I am taking to China in November. I am very glad I bought the book and read it. There was a lot of history and real people's experiences. I had so little idea of what it was like to live through the Cultural Revolution and in the snitch society created by Mao. I would recommend this book to anyone.
October 22, 2008 | |
Chinese Lessons
I needed this book for a college class. I was able to buy it on line for a savings of about 40% even after shipping charges. The book arrived in good shape and in plenty of time for my class.
October 13, 2008 | |
Very Good Book For Understanding Today's Chinese 
Though it is going to sound like a newspaper movie ad, I cannot resist quoting the tag lines from others who have already reviewed this book:
1. "Masterful account of modern China"
2. "Superb"
3. "A book you can't put down"
4. "An exceptional book, exceptionally written"
5. "Extraordinary"
6. "I laughed, I cried" Okay, so I made up the last one.
The book beautifully (and usually depressingly) describes how China's past so heavily influences its present. I felt I knew everyone in the book because they were composites of the real life Chinese with whom I deal in my work as a lawyer dealing with China. It was a joy to read and it increased my understanding of China. To understand today's China, one must know at least the basics of China's modern history and, perhaps even more importantly, how that history has affected today's Chinese. This book definitely aids in that understanding.
August 11, 2008 | |
A great ride
Very easy to read. Great entertaining writing style with lots of very clever anecdotes. On completing this book I then had to a) read all the other reviews here and b) check the Washington Post for any further author work. The big question here is:
what happens to the five profiled students in this book?
Are they still friendly with the author?
June 17, 2008 | |
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