NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/aus/culture/china/916

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            |  \/___| |/    China News Digest     | |/__/  |/
             \_______/  (Books & Journals Review) |_______/

                             January 3, 1992

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1. "The North China Lover" by Marguerite Duras
    Movie Reverses Stereotypes of Chinese --
    "The Lover"  directed by: Jean-Jacques Annaud ...................... 74

2. "The New Emperors:
    China in the Era of Mao and Deng" by Harrison Salisbury ............ 48

3. Hong Kong's Class of Wills: Why the Fuss Now?  ...................... 74

4. A Finite Possession --
   "China, Britain and Hong Kong: 1895-1945" By Chan Lau Kit-ching
   "Promoting Prosperity: The Hong Kong Way
    of Social Policy"  by Catherine Jones
   "The Illustrated History of Hong Kong" by Nigel Cameron ............ 145
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Editor's Note:  We welcome all CND readers to contribute to this column. If
                you encounter any China-related books  or journals that you
                would like to share with  other CND readers, please send in
                comments, newspaper reviews, journal articles, and excerpts
                etc to  [e-mail]   Thank you.

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1. "The North China Lover" by Marguerite Duras
    Movie Reverses Stereotypes of Chinese --
    "The Lover"  directed by: Jean-Jacques Annaud ...................... 74
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edited and forwarded by: Gu Zhen ([e-mail])
Source: The New York Times Book Review 12/27/92
Review written by: David Plante
Movie Review written by: Gu Zhen

"The North China Lover" by Marguerite Duras
Translated by Leigh Hafrey, New York: The New Press. $19.95

After the great success of Marguerite Duras' previous novel, "The Lover"
(L'Amant), it was inevitable that a film should be made of it. And one movie
in English with the same title (adapted and directed by Annaud) has already
been released and met with good reviews.

Ms. Duras, however, had her own idea of how the film should be made and
began "The North China Lover" as notes toward a screenplay script. "The
North China Lover," translated with great clarity by Leigh Halfrey, is here
published as a novel, greatly expanded from Ms. Duras' original notes but
with all of her suggestions of how it might be filmed included. Its story is
the same as "The Lover": a French schoolgirl, in Vietnam before World War II
with her despairing mother and two wayward brothers, has a passionate affair
with a rich Chinese man. But "The North China Lover" is an altogether
different kind of novel.

The novel explores more deeply the theme of sex. Not only is the girl
sexually obsessed with the Chinese man, but also by her schoolmate Helene,
whom she imagines, in the midst of their lesbian embraces, making love with
the Chinese man. In addition, the adopted Thanh, a Siamese orphan and
servant to the family, is drawn sexually to the girl, but also to her
younger brother. There is something potently erotic between the mother and
the oldest son, Pierre.

Through various sexual suggestions, the author seems to convey a sense of
universal immensity in suffering and death aroused by sex and inextricably
by love. The strength of novel depends on the originality and the force of
description. "The North China Lover" will send a strange thrill through you.

**********
Film title: The Lover
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Adapted from: L'Amant  (by Marguerite Duras)
The Chinese actor: Tony Leung (Hong Kong)

We are all tired of seeing stereotypes portraying the lovers between East
and West. Such a stereotype typically depicts a beautiful Chinese (or Asian)
woman who, poor, powerless and helpless, falls into love with a rich and
powerful white male. This white "prince" will eventually save her from
poverty and backwardness that characterize China and much of Asia. This
stereotype actually reflects Western chauvinist perception of the East.

The movie "The Lover," however, reverses this stereotype. The story line of
the movie is exactly the other way round: It is about a poor, powerless and
helpless French girl who falls in love with a rich and powerful Chinese man.
The story takes place in 1920's, Saigon, Vietnam: A 15-year school girl from
an impoverished French colonialist family meets by accident a handsome and
charming Chinese man (32 years old) of a local wealthy family.

Tony Leung, a Hong Kong film actor, plays his part very successfully as the
Chinese man. As a rich man, he is generous and cultivated. As a lover, he is
passionate and tender. As a gentleman, he is considerate and good-mannered.
And as Chinese, he is dignified and never loses his pride even when he is
deep in love with the French girl (played by English actress Jane March).

Because of their reversed roles of racial stereotypes, their love affair,
which could never be openly accepted by the colonial Vietnamese society of
1920's, had to stay secret and was therefore short-lived. Sooner or later,
they had to split. And split they did: the girl went back to France, and the
man underwent the arranged marriage of Chinese tradition.

Typical of French movies, "The Lover" is filled with sex scenes. It was
originally rated as NC-17, according to some report. But after cutting some
scenes (which means basically cutting off male frontal nude images), the
director Annaud released it as a R movie. Despite this accommodation to
American public taste, the film as a whole, nevertheless, remains very much a
French bedroom romance.

It is a French movie, based on a French novel written by a French woman,
directed by a French director. Yet it is in English language. The dialogue
is simple and clear. Perhaps, the director intends to appeal to American
audience who are more exposed to inter-racial and inter- cultural
relationship.

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2. "The New Emperors:
    China in the Era of Mao and Deng" by Harrison Salisbury ............ 48
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by: Jian
Source:
Review written by: Frank Day

"The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng"
by Harrison E. Salisbury; Little, Brown, 1992, 544 pages,$24.95

Harrison E. Salisbury tells the
story of the Chinese People's Republic
proclaimed on October 1, 1949, by Mao
Zedong and ruled by Mao and, since
1976, by Den Xiaoping.

Harrison Salisbury is a veteran China-watcher who has a total command of the
written sources on that country. In THE NEW EMPERORS he draws on that
background and many personal interviews to shape a coherent account of the
tumultuous events that have wracked China since Mao Zedong established the
Chinese People's Republic in 1949.

Salisbury illuminates the events surrounding China's entry into the Korean
War. Despite American policymakers' conclusion that China was responsible
for North Korea's aggression, it was the Soviet Union that masterminded the
war. Mao - whose son Anying died in the war - was betrayed by Stalin, whom
he always detested, and forced into a war that came just when he had begun
to demobilize and plan for economic reconstruction.

At the same time, in 1950, fearing U.S. intentions, Mao began what is known
as the Third Line project, turning a remote area in western China into "an
impregnable arsenal." Deng Xiaoping was chosen to carry out this task, but
by the time he had established the necessary transportation and other
facilities the political winds had shifted and it was the nearby western
neighbor that worried Mao most.

Two terrible errors crippled Mao's reign almost fatally: the disastrous
Great Leap Forward, which began in 1958 and was phased out only in 1962
after it had caused widespread famine; and the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution, which Mao initiated in 1966 and which brought China to a
standstill under the paranoid slaughter directed by the Gang of Four. Of
these two calamities, Salisbury seems willing to explain the first by Mao's
bad judgment and bullheadedness. But the Cultural Revolution grew out of
fantasies that Salisbury suggests were born of addiction to the sleeping
pills that Mao and all of his old associates relied on.

With Mao's death in 1976, Deng - who had himself been exiled by the Gang of
Four - worked his way into the Chairman's position. His rapid move toward
pragmatic economic policies kept him fending off threats from the old
Marxist right, but his broad success was not seriously dimmed until the
brutalities of the Tiananmen uprising in 1989. Since then, economic progress
under the hard-liners has been slow.

THE NEW EMPERORS is a completely absorbing account of Mao and Deng and the
intricacies of power struggles in the People's Republic.

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3. Hong Kong's Class of Wills: Why the Fuss Now?  ...................... 74
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by: Steve Haber ([e-mail])
Source: The Economist, 12/14/92

HONG KONG'S CLASH OF WILLS: WHY THE FUSS NOW?

Britain wants to squeeze democracy through the loopholes in its agreements
with China before handing over Hong Kong

What next in Hong Kong?  With Britain and China seemingly content for the
moment with a merely modest level of rancour over the territory, it is a
good time to reflect on what the fight is really about before it begins
again.

The squabble is not about democracy as such.  The proposals that Chris
Patten, Hong Kong's governor, made on Oct. 7 for a bit more democracy in the
colony are (or ought to be) unexceptionable, even to old communists in
Beijing.  Mr. Patten is, in essence, suggesting that 29 of the 60 seats in
Hong Kong's Legislative Council (Legco) should be chosen by direct election.

True, another 10 would be chosen by directly elected officials of local
government.  But that would not greatly alter the equation. Legco is now,
and will remain after China takes over Hong Kong in 1997, a fairly powerless
body in a territory under the control of a strong executive appointed by a
sovereign power (Britain now, China after 1997).

Some think China has reacted harshly to Mr. Patten's ideas because it fears
the contagion of democracy.  But in the Basic Law, Hong Kong's China-drafted
post-1997 constitution, China has already agreed to 20 directly elected
seats in Legco in 1995, rising to 24 in 1999 and 30 in 2004.  It seemed
happy, pre-Patten, to help spread Hong Kong's democratic virus itself.  Why
the fuss now?

The bad reason - bad, that is for Hong Kong - is that China and Britain are
caught up in a contest of wills.  Here China has a point.  For years, British
policy toward Hong Kong was based on the idea that, although Britain should
try to sway China by patient argument in private, Hong Kong's interests
would best be served by "convergence" of British practice in the territory
with China's post-1997 intentions.

Suddenly, with Mr. Patten's arrival, Britain has decided that as much
democracy as can be squeezed through loopholes in prior Chinese-British
agreements matters more than a smooth transition to Chinese rule.

If this true today, it must have been true in the mid-1980s. Either Britain
was derelict in its duties to Hong Kong then or it is being reckless now.
No wonder China feels double-crossed and the people of Hong Kong cynical.

Yet there is a good reason, too, for Mr. Patten's defiance. Hong Kong did
not become the magnificent place it is because of democracy; its first shred
of that came just last year, after 150 years of British rule.  What has
mattered for Hong Kong are the freedoms associated with democracy: civil
liberties and the rule of law.

In the Joint Declaration, the 1984 British-Chinese agreement on Hong Kong,
China gave no promises about formal democracy, but it did give undertakings
to preserve Hong Kong's freedoms. Mr. Patten has his doubts about whether
China can be trusted to respect those freedoms.

China's campaign of intimidation in Hong Kong over the past two months shows
he has good grounds for doubt.  The governor's main aim is, or should be, to
bolster the autonomy that China promised Hong Kong in the Joint Declaration.
More democracy can be a means to this end, but it is hardly the only one.

In one way, Mr. Patten has already gone far toward his objective. Though the
Hong Kong stock market has buckled under China's onslaught, public opinion
has remained firm.  A poll shows only a small decline in support for the
governor's proposals even after weeks of Chinese criticism: 37 percent of
Hong Kongers back him, whereas 24 percent are opposed.

Yet a large majority wants the dispute settled through talks. A settlement
is likely to involve, by next spring, a reversion to roughly the democratic
limits set out in the Basic Law and some salve for China's feeling that its
undeniable de facto sovereignty over Hong Kong has been assaulted by
Britain. That would not be too bad.

An unafraid populace is the best guarantor of Hong Kong's autonomy.  The
very fact of Mr. Patten's exercise in self-assertion is likely to prove more
significant than any details of the program.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. A Finite Possession --
   "China, Britain and Hong Kong: 1895-1945" By Chan Lau Kit-ching
   "Promoting Prosperity: The Hong Kong Way
    of Social Policy"  by Catherine Jones
   "The Illustrated History of Hong Kong" by Nigel Cameron ............ 145
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by: XU Ming Yang
Source: F.E.E.R. 3/7/92
Review written by: Stacy Mosher

"China, Britain and Hong Kong: 1895-1945" By Chan Lau Kit-ching
The Chinese University Press, Hongkong. HK$195.00 US$30.00

"Promoting Prosperity: The Hong Kong Way
of Social Policy"  by Catherine Jones
The Chinese University Press, Hongkong. HK$160.00

"The Illustrated History of Hong Kong" by Nigel Cameron
Oxford University Press, Hongkong. HK$235.00

Elsewhere it would have been cause for a major celebration, but in Hongkong,
the 150th anniversary at the beginning of this year was passed off by a
government spokesman as "not that big a thing."

Nobody watching events over the last few years will be surprised by this
tacit acknowledgement of Hongkong's status as an embarrassing and unloved
product of political malfeasance. For all its vaunted success, the British
colony has never been honoured with a jubilee or centenary.

The history that began 150 years ago will come to an end in 1997, when China
takes over from Britain. The historical antecedents of Hongkong's unique
situation are examined by a number of new books.

One of the more valuable contributions to our understanding of this is
"China, Britain and Hong Kong: 1895-1945." Scholarly and chock-a-block with
names and dates, Chan Lau Kit-ching's book makes use of a multitude of
previously unused or inaccessible Chinese and English sources. The result is
an eerie mirror image of the present, with early versions of local activists
and leftist patriots, mainland Chinese firebrands, inept rubber-stamp
Legislative Councillors, and other startlingly familiar characters and
incidents.

Chan chose her time frame to begin with Japan's defeat of China in the first
Sino-Japanese war in 1895, a year which not coincidentally marked the start
of the Chinese revolutionary movement that led in part to the downfall of
the last Qing monarch. That movement took Hongkong as its base.

The history ends with Japan's defeat in World War II and withdrawal of its
occupying forces from Hongkong. Britain's status as an imperial power is
drastically reduced, and colonialism very much out of fashion. China has
become a world power, and the revolutionaries are now the head of its
government, and look on their former stronghold from a very different
perspective.

Perhaps the book's most surprising revelation is that even at this early
stage, there were a significant number of people who based their actions on
a strong commitment to Hongkong as their permanent home. At the time, these
were mostly Chinese merchants and professionals, hardly representative of
the largely transient and politically apathetic majority.

But with the passage of time, the number and scope of self-professed
belongers increased, and one sense the surprise of often clueless community
leaders when the formerly passive masses begin to demand their share of
Hongkong's growing bounty. Lacking any social leverage of their own,
ordinary workers used political developments in China to gain what they
desired from the colonial elite, and in return were used by mainland Chinese
factions for their political ends.

The widening gulf between mainland and Hongkong mentalities has gradually
made mainland politics a less popular refuge for the aggrieved. But Hongkong
has remained a pawn in the contest of interests between Britain and China,
sometimes influenced by Japan and the US. If Hongkong people feel despair
today at the lack of genuine concern about their views and wishes, they
might take some bitter comfort in the knowledge that it has always been so.

Chan's conclusion is that if history is at all an indicator of the future,
Hongkong's fate will be entirely up to China, with Hongkong people allowed,
as always, only the choice to stay or leave. As for Britain, it "is saddled
with the horrendous burden of seeing Hongkong through its last days as a
British colony."

Another valuable historical perspective is provided by "Promoting
Prosperity: The Hong Kong Way of Social Policy." The title suggests a
government PR job, but in fact Catherine Jones' study is a wry and often
deeply felt look at a "rare, protracted, unintended, unfinished experiment"
with "little sense or pretence of collective mission, let alone lasting
achievement. It is a tale dominated by anti-heroes and anti-heroics, with
not even the prospect of a 'proper ending' to come."

The developments that Jones tends to refer to as "social policy" were mainly
ad hoc responses of a centralised bureaucracy to situations that threatened
to run out of control and destroy Hongkong's value as a factory of fortune.
Sanitation and building ordinances were implemented to keep the epidemics of
the teeming underclass from spreading to the commercial and political elite;
subsidised education introduced to endear the colonial rulers to their
reluctant subjects; limited welfare aid and labour regulations to pacify the
exploited masses when they threatened violent eruptions; public housing to
handle the destabilising floods of refugees from China.

Jones carefully traces the political and social changes that gradually
reduced the conflict of interests between Chinese and European, rich and
poor, and ushered in a teetering consensus on the relationship between
public welfare and the proverbial "prosperity and stability."

Grudgingly imparted morsels of largesse have brought social stability with
minimal sacrifice to prosperity. More cynically, in the absence of
cradle-to-grave social security, Hongkong people have been spurred to a
relentless striving for a decent life that has resulted in the present
dynamic economic miracle. The territory's social policies are an affront to
anyone with a keen sense of social justice and equality, and many suffer
under their inadequacies. But in comparison with the costly failures of many
Western welfare states, they work.

Jones sees the key to this dubious success in the rich incentives offered by
Hongkong's highly mobile social hierarchy. A poor welfare recipient today
can still aspire to be a tax-paying millionaire tomorrow, and Hongkong
people, with their strong work ethic, would much rather enjoy the
pleasurable fruits of their labour than accept charity for "failure."

But the cohesive sense of common interest has developed just at the time
when it has become jeopardised by the imminent return of sovereignty to
China. Ironically, the future socialist master is likely to impede rather
than contribute to the social welfare developed under cold-eyed capitalism.
The result: "'Hongkong New Society' has already the air of a might-have-been
indeed."

A Minor quibble is Jones' textual arrangement, using lengthy end-notes to
provide parenthetical comments and elaborations on the main text. The
constant flipping back and forth - in one case, five notes in a single
sentence - detracts greatly from the pleasure and ease of reading this
valuable study.

An easier read in all aspects is provided by "The Illustrated History of
Hong Kong". Written in an affable style, and profusely illustrated, Nigel
Cameron's history devotes lavish attention to local colour and fascinating
individuals.

A look at the bibliography provokes reservations about the author's claim to
"make use of Chinese sources, where these are available." But he does take
obvious pain to cast a local perspective on events, and point out how
antagonisms between the Chinese and foreign communities, and a general lack
of caring rulers at some stages, contributed to bitter social battles.

In general, Cameron's history is one of admirable, or at least condonable,
intentions. Hongkong's ruling elite will feel little discomfort with the
description of the "urban epic" of Hongkong's more recent industrialisation
and political development, handled by skilful officials on behalf of a
passive populace who are after all (oh yes, that again) unaccustomed to
democracy and civil rights.

Those who want to enjoy colonial Hongkong as a "colourful period" of history
will certainly enjoy Cameron's book. Those who want a better understanding
of the darker and more frustrating aspects of that history should look to
Chan and Jones.

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