The People's Republic of Amnesia, by Louisa Lim

My first trip to Beijing was in the summer of 1988. China immediately captured my attention; I encountered a world unlike anything I'd seen, beautiful and oppressive at the same time. Almost exactly one year later, the Tiananmen Square Massacre took place and captured the attention of the world. Now, nearly thirty years later, Louisa Lim takes a look at the fading legacy of the rebellion.

For me, this was an unforgettable moment in time, in league with the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion or 9/11. The image of an ordinary man standing in front of a column of tanks is as powerful a picture as I've ever seen, and recognized virtually everywhere as the iconic moment of the event. In China, however, only 15% of university students in Beijing recognized it, due to the government systematically blocking and censoring any information related to the event. This sad fact is from where Lim draws her title: The People's Republic of Amnesia.

The author does a great job of interviewing many people about the incident, from mothers of survivors to soldiers that were there, from students at the time to students of today. These varied viewpoints give an in-depth look at both the event then and how it is remembered now—or not remembered as the case may be. In particular, the chapter on Chengdu and the oppressive events that took place there in the same timeframe was eye-opening. It would have been a truly captivating read if I could have shook the feeling that Lim continually patted herself on the back, congratulating herself on writing such a significant book. She may be correct in its momentousness, but the self-aggrandizing tone was irritating to no end. This is an important book, and gives a view into not only Tiananmen, but into the current Chinese government as well. The tone is annoying, but well worth forcing yourself to finish.

First Sentence:

Plumes of smoke from fires frame the Gate of Heavenly Peace, as soldiers pile the students' possessions to burn them.

The Aquariums of Pyongyang, by Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot

The author was nine years old when imprisoned in the Yodok concentration camp in 1977. For ten years he lived a brutal and terrifying life simply because his grandfather was suspected of being disloyal to North Korea. There was schooling of a sort for the first six years, but it consisted mainly of studying Kim Il-sung at the expense of anything else, coupled with harsh punishments for simple mistakes. School would seem a luxury when he "graduated" to the dangerous and draining work details. The hard-labor zone was the worst. "The work was conceived solely for the purpose of driving prisoners to their graves. ... Three months was the longest we had ever heard of anyone surviving under these conditions." The work itself was as unforgiving as the camp with prisoners being forced to work outside in rags as long as temperature was above -13°F performing seemingly thankless tasks like chopping down trees or digging mine shafts. If that isn't horrific enough the inmates were forced to augment their meager food with rats and snakes simply to build up enough energy to make it through the forced workday. Public executions and severe beatings were a way of life as well; hard to believe this all is currently happening and not in a past lifetime.

Choi-hwan is eventually released and tries to make a life as a free man, but under constant surveillance. When he is (accurately) accused of listening to forbidden radio stations he decides to escape to South Korea via China rather than risk going back to the gulag. Never knowing who to trust or which bribes would work and which would be lost was a very different kind of stress than the camp. The camp was brutal and oppressive, but there was little doubt where you stood. Trying to escape North Korea was entirely different. When boarding the boat that would eventually take him to safety, "one of the policemen bent forward, apparently trying to get a better look. I almost passed out. I knew I was wavering between life and death. I no longer saw the turnstile ahead, and I felt like I had entered a movie that was in slow motion." The officer lost interest and Choi-hwan made it to safety, but it was clearly a harrowing trip.

Part biography and part horror story, this was a difficult but rewarding read. Genuine insight into an oppressive dictatorship is rare, making this a valuable historical tool as well as a political exposé. The Aquariums of Pyongyang is certainly not beach reading, but certainly worth your time.

First Sentence:

In the 1960s, North Korea's disaster was not yet on the horizon.

The Snakehead, by Patrick Radden Keefe

In June of 1993 a decrepit tramp steamer named the Golden Venture ran aground in the dead of the night near Queens; the police officers who discovered the wreck were stunned to find over 280 Chinese immigrants being smuggled into the country leaping into the water and swarming the beach in an effort to abandon the sinking ship. With this startling opening, the book jumps back in time a bit and begins to tell the true story of the smuggling ring behind the accident and their trip to justice. This is a fascinating read and full of vivid prose; the heartbreaking descriptions of the immigrants take on a greater depth of horror when you realize this isn’t fiction, but actually happened: “It was a primordial scene—an outtake from a zombie movie—as hordes of men and women, gaunt and hollow-cheeked, walked out of the sea. ... There they collapsed, vomiting saltwater, their bodies shaking, they faces slightly purple from exposure. ... They were dressed only in their underwear, and ... they looked like "something from a concentration camp." They were all angles, bones and ribs, not a finger-and-thumb’s worth of body fat between them.”

Keefe does an excellent job of explaining how the smuggling ring worked worldwide, intermixing the stories of the ringleaders, the FBI investigation, and the Golden Venture and its passengers. I was surprised at how complicated the human-trafficking operation was, and how willing the people trying to get to America were to enter the scheme. Many, even after enduring the indignities of being treated like cattle and then forced into a form of indentured servitude, would send for their families via this same illegal channel. “Even an illegal existence in the United States was better than a legal existence anywhere else.”

That said, the one viewpoint that seems to be missing is that of the immigrants themselves. What happens to the group after being rescued is covered, but very little of the journey itself. Sean Chen is the closest we get, but his story largely starts when he is detained after the wreck and his path through INS seeking asylum. Regardless, for anyone interested in either true-crime or the sad state of our immigration laws will find this book difficult to set down.

First Sentence:

The ship made land at last a hundred yards off the Rockaway Peninsula, a slender, skeletal finger of sand that forms a kind of barrier between the southern reaches of Brooklyn and Queens and the angry waters of the Atlantic.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami

The more I think about this book the more I liked it. It had a confusing and overcomplicated plot, but the style and imagery was captivating and I found myself in a state of eager anticipation each time I picked it up. Toru Okada is the main character and the story opens with him receiving a crank call. In short order we find he has recently quit his job, his wife leaves him, and his cat has vanished. These losses set Toru on three separate quests: to find his identity, to find his wife, and to find his cat. The crank calls act as both conscience and oracle and quickly escalate, arriving not only via telephone but through his dreams and even in person in a fashion. With a few other odd characters Toru starts down a series of vignettes that are increasingly strange and entirely unpredictable. Along the way we take huge tangents that don’t really advance the plot, but they are so entertaining that my usual complaint about poor editing doesn’t come close to applying. I found the ending a bit abrupt with too many unanswered questions, but oddly satisfying.

Originally written in Japanese, the images painted with words are both vivid and surreal. The translation by Jay Rubin is amazing; with only one exception (a passage where the speaker drops into English to make a point) there was no stilted or off-kilter phrasing indicating that English wasn’t the originating language. Three random quotes I particularly liked:
    “If the Dalai Lama were on his deathbed and the jazz musician Eric Dolphy were to try to explain to him the importance of choosing one’s engine oil in accordance with changes in the sound of the base clarinet, that exchange might have been a touch more worthwhile and effective than my conversations with Noboru Wataya.”
    “"Oh well, never mind," she said, her voice like a little broom sweeping off the dust that had piled up on the slats of a venetian blind.”
    “It was fairly nice music, but the kind that seems to melt into the air the moment it emerges from its source.”
Beautiful.

First Sentence:

When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta.

Battle Royale, by Koushun Takami

Battle Royale details a ruthless program where middle-school students are armed and dumped on a small isolated island. They are forced to fight each other until there is only one child left alive, while the totalitarian government monitors the whole thing. To make sure the teenagers obey the rules and try to kill each other, metal collars are fastened around their necks that will explode if they linger in a forbidden area or attempt to remove them. If twenty-four hours pass without a murder, all of the collars will be detonated simultaneously. A few students willingly participate in the slaughter, which gives everyone on the island a palpable fear of their classmates.

Very violent and fairly graphic, the manga roots of this novel are easy to see. This was described to me as a Lord of the Flies for our generation; after reading it I can easily see the comparison. Lord of the Flies detailed the psychological unravelling of a group of marooned kids on a desert island, where Battle Royale focuses more on how commonplace violence has become. While both involve children in untenable situations, Battle Royale is much more horrific because the kids are forced to act against their classmates by an uncaring government.

While a fascinating read, it was somewhat difficult to follow in places. I found the Asian names hard to keep straight, especially because I’m not savvy enough to tell which names are male and female. Yoshio, Kazuhiko, Noriko, and Yukiko are four examples—the first two are male, the last two female—of names I confused throughout. Luckily there was a roster in the front of the book telling who was who, but it was distracting to flip around when I needed help. Even so, this was a compelling read that was hard to put down. Very entertaining.

First Sentence:

As the bus entered the prefectural capital of Takamatsu, garden suburbs transformed into city streets of multicolored neon, headlights of oncoming cars, and checkered lights of office buildings.

M*A*S*H, by Richard Hooker

I’m a big fan of both the movie and television show, so when I saw this in a bargain bin I nabbed it. Surprisingly, this is not a well-written book. The dialogue is stilted and repetitive, the characters are one-note, and the various adventures are disconnected. I’d expected more from the story that launched Hawkeye, Trapper John, and the rest of the 4077.

As it turns out, the movie was much closer to the book in both plot and character history than I normally see. (Read any of Fleming’s James Bond books and then see the movie with the same name as an excellent converse example.) Painless’ suicide, the football game, and the Boys from Dover episode are covered in both and are pretty much the same. The book also details other adventures that while aren’t in the movie are clearly used as source material for the tv show. The most surprising thing about the book was that Margaret Houlihan and Frank Burns are just bit players instead of the main antagonists with which we are more familiar.

Is it worth your time? If you are a M*A*S*H fan, then yes. If not, I’ll leave you with two words and let you make up your own mind: epileptic whore.

First Sentence:

When Radar O’Reilly, just out of high school, left Ottumwa, Iowa, and enlisted in the United States Army it was with the express purpose of making a career of the Signal Corps.

Ho Yi the Archer and Other Classic Chinese Tales, retold by Shelley Fu

I was wandering through Half Price Books the other day and found this on a sale table. I’ve always been interested in folklore,and I’m taking a trip to China soon, so I picked it up even though it is aimed at children. There are only seven tales here covering normal folklore topics such as creation, morality, and love. As expected from the land of Buddha, there is a heavy dose of karma for all involved. Some interesting tales here.

My favorite was The Story of the White Snake. It told of a snake, Bai Su-Tzin, that takes human form and marries a simple man named Shu Shen. On the surface this is a tale of love and trust, with the message it is sometimes better to simply accept happiness as it comes rather than always pushing for the truth at the heart of the matter. This symbolism illustrates the conflict between Buddhism and Confucian beliefs that was raging in China when this was written. It is a beer-pondering question for sure: would you want to know if your spouse was deceiving you at the cost of your happiness together? Depends on the nature of the deception, of course, but it is a slippery slope from fibbing when asked, “Does this dress make me look fat?”

First Sentence (from the introduction):

The origins of Chinese folktales include history, songs, theater, and the oral tradition of storytelling.

The Art of War, by Sun Tzu

I don’t normally look at the world as a series of battles to be fought or foes to vanquish. (Some people do, and in general they drive me nuts.) That said, a lot of what Sun Tzu says does dovetail with my general outlook. “Now a soldier’s spirit is keenest in the morning; ... and in the evening, his mind is bent only on returning to camp.” I’m a firm believer that a normal work-week (40-50 hours) is much more healthy and productive than seven day, 80 hour weeks. “When ... orders are not clear and distinct; when there are no fixed duties assigned ... the result is utter disorganization.” Seems pretty straightforward to me, but I’m constantly surprised at supervisors that don’t work this way. I’m not arrogant enough to believe that I’m the best manager ever, but I do hope I live up to some of these ideals.

I know I’m not the first person to read The Art of War and find things I can use in my everyday life. “Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.” I’ll try and remember that next time I want to shoot off a smart-ass reply to an email. Good stuff.

First Sentence:

1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State.