http://pixxiefishbooks.blogspot.com/2...

For those of you who, like me, always thought Jan Wong was just a writer of fluffy, though amusing, columns in the Globe & Mail (lunch with Jan Wong, anyone?), this will set you straight.

I stumbled across this book in a second-hand shop in Ottawa, when I'd walked in intending to get something nice and light-hearted to read over lunch one day. Remembering how fascinated and curious I'd been to learn more after reading Ian Johnson's Wild Grass, I decided to pick this up. And - WOW! It's an amazing book. It's eye-opening, elucidating, and entertaining. Or to put it more bluntly, it will knock your socks off.

I don't think I can hook you any better than by posting here the publisher's blurb (from the Chapters website):

Jan Wong, a Canadian of Chinese descent, went to China as a starry-eyed Maoist in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution. A true believer -- and one of only two Westerners permitted to enroll at Beijing University -- her education included wielding a pneumatic drill at the Number One Machine Tool Factory. In the name of the Revolution, she renounced rock and roll, hauled pig manure in the paddy fields, and turned in a fellow student who sought her help in getting to the United States. She also met and married the only American draft dodger from the Vietnam War to seek asylum in China.

Red China Blues begins as Wong's startling -- and ironic -- memoir of her rocky six-year romance with Maoism that began to sour as she became aware of the harsh realities of Chinese communism and led to her eventual repatriation to the West. Returning to China in the late eighties as a journalist, she covered both the brutal Tiananmen Square crackdown and the tumultuous era of capitalist reforms under Deng Xiaoping. In a wry, absorbing, and often surreal narrative, she relates the horrors that led to her disillusionment with the 'worker's paradise.' And through the stories of the people -- an unhappy young woman who was sold into marriage, China's most famous dissident, a doctor who lengthens penises -- Wong creates an extraordinary portrait of the world's most populous nation. In setting out to show readers in the Western world what life is like in China, and why we should care, Wong reacquaints herself with the old friends -- and enemies -- of her radical past, and comes to terms with the legacies of her ancestral homeland.

Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Go to your nearest bookstore or library and read this book. You won't be sorry.

Amazing book. Jan Wong writes about the social and political unrest in modern China as Iris Chang did in her work "The Rape of Nanking". This book is an easy and at the same time a compelling read to familiarize a beginner with the major political figures in contemporary Chinese politics as well as major political upheavals that took place in China over the past 50 years. Jan's wry and satirical sense of humour, coupled with her keen sense of observation and interpretation of the unfolding events get you panting and gasping through the book, from the beginning till the end, and still hungry for more. ( )

A well written portrait of Communist China and its transition to a more free enterprise economy as well as a chronicle of Jan Wong's personal changes as she encounters China as a teenager and as an mature woman. ( )

This is a very readable book about the author's experience of and in China. She first went to China as a young woman who firmly believed in Mao's theories and in socialism. As the book's subtitle, "My Long March from Mao to Now" implies, her views change over time as she experiences life in China. The book traces her experiences at Beijing University, at a collective farm, and as a reporter at Tiannamen Square in 1989.

Ms. Wong's experiences in China are diverse and probably unmatched by many North Americans. This gives her book a fascinating and unique perspective that is well worth reading. ( )

not a quick read because of the scope it covers but that's okay because it gives you so much to think about. it follows wong all the way through her fixation on maoist china from life as a pretty chinese canadian co-ed with radical ideas to intigrating herself into the heart of the maoist movement in beijing to visiting beijing again later in life and buying a mao lighter at a gift shop. totally fasenating and honest. ( )