往事:杨虎城之子回忆 (杨拯民 )

I bought this book in the belief that it was a book on 杨虎城 (the collaborator of 张学良 in the Xi'an Incident - 西安事变), more specifically, a recollection of what happened during the Incident. But I was disappointed, it turned out to have only a small chapter on the Incident, and perhaps only about half the book was on 杨虎城 himself. Much of the rest of the book was on the author himself, the son of 杨虎城 and too much of it was on his adulation of the personalities in the Chinese Communist Party and his relationship with different people whom played bit roles in the greater scheme of history but must be mentioned given the Chinese's culture of 'giving face' (给面子). It was until the end of the book that I realised that while the book was written by 杨拯民, it was arranged by his wife after his death and only at the goading of his friends.

However, one does get some rewards making it through the book. For one thing, writing from the perspective of a common man, the reader gets a sense of general attitudes of the people in China in that tumultuous period. For example, if they were indignant towards the Japanese's invasion of China, they continued to want to live their lives as usual. Even the Marco Polo Bridge Incident did not rouse them to want to fight (pg 155), hoping on one hand that this might be the point when the Japanese could be chased out of China, but wishing on the other hand that the Incident would not precipitate a bigger war. This dilemma puts paid to the notion that Chinese were all patriotic.

Brief mentions were given to the Cultural Revolution that happened much later. It is obvious that the author and his wife both suffered greatly during that time. While they were spared of their lives, many of their friends were not. But the author was unwilling to talk more about it, giving only brief mentions of what happened in drips throughout the book and even absolving Mao for what happened - 人非圣贤，孰能无过。 Indeed.

What is more interesting to me was the almost complete lack of mention throughout the book about his or the Communist Party's fight with the Japanese. Yes, this is the autobiography of a single person, he might have been lucky to have escaped having to fight the Japanese. But he spent many years in Yan An (延安), the Communist base and then was posted to various places, yet in none of this was he required to face the Japanese, nor did he talked about anyone who he met who had. It makes one wonder about the scale of the Communists' involvement in fighting the Japanese.

Overall a rather disappointing book, and if you are trying to understand more about the Xi'an Incident, this is not a book that you need to read. But if you are interested in the somewhat ethnographic take on Chinese life, then this provides one view.

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