Eric's Beijing Diary

I think there is a lot of moral confusion about ceasefires. . This blog post was inspired by a tweet from Mr. Jerad Kushner, who worked for Trump, and was very significantly involved in the development of the Abraham Accords. Perhaps we could say he was the architect of the accords.

Here in China, I have met more than one young person from Europe or America, who has come to China to study the history and language of this country. I, myself am interested in the history of China, so I naturally begin to discuss the subject, and try to get their thoughts on some issue or another. But if I refer to something that pertains to the many dynasties of China, the response is always the same, "Oh. I'm only interested in modern China." I am always intrigued by this comment, because I don't think it is possible properly to understand modern China without knowing something of what went on before. But certainly the predominant interest of those from the West who write about China, is the history of "Modern China," which I date from the Macartney Mission in 1793.

This new biography by Jonathan Fenby, former editor of the South China Morning Post, promises to be the definitive work on the subject for years to come. There are several reasons why I like his book. I will try to elucidate the most important. First of all, Chiang Kai-shek has often been seen by westerners as the person who "lost" China because of his refusal to fight the Japanese. Much of this view came from Barbara Tuchman's biography of Joseph Stillwell, which came out in '70 or '71. Stillwell was protrayed as the hero who tried to save China, but was prevented from doing so by Chiang. In actual fact, Stillwell was a jerk, who according to one of his strongest supporters (Marshall) was "his own worst enemy." He referred to Chiang Kai-shek as "Peanut," and FDR as "Rubber Legs." Jonathan Fenby sums up Stillwell with one simple statement: "He was the wrong man at the wrong time." Very well put.

But getting back to Chiang Kai-shek. Should he have concentrated more on fighting the Japanese, and not so much on fighting the Communists? Probably so. Chiang always said that the Japanese were a disease of the skin, and the Communists were a disease of the heart. In some ways, you could argue that history has supported his approach, because the Japanese were ultimately defeated, not by the Communists or the Nationalists, but by the Americans, when they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the problem is that the Americans made Europe a priority. Asia came second. And by the time the Japanese were finally defeated, too much damage had been done in terms of the relationship between the Nationalists and the laobaixing (common people) of China. If Chiang Kai-shek had fought more vociferously, he would certainly have prevented the Xi'an Incident, and may have been more likely to have the people with him by the time the Americans finally did what they had to to put the Japanese out of business. At least that's the thinking. It is very hard to say for sure.

But Fenby is fair. He shows that the Communists employed basically the same strategy--avoiding conflict with the Japanese to save themselves for the inevitable showdown with the KMT. So what is the truth. T?e fact is that both the Nationalists and the Communists fought the Japanese, but probably not as well as they could have if they had not been fighting each other. A nation divided against itself cannot stand. And then there is the matter of opium. It is well known that Chiang Kai-shek was supported by Big-Eared Du, who controlled the opium trade in Shanghai. But what is not commonly known is that Mao had a production facility for opium set up in Yanan. He fully intended to wipe out opium after the Communists were in power, but he could not resist the temptation to benefit from the sizeable revenue this drug brought in during a time when the fledgeling Communist Party desparately needed cash. According to Fenby, the production and sale of opium in Yan'an by the Communists brought in billions of dollars, and at one point constituted 40% of total revenue.

This is a sad book. But it is a very important one, because it deals so completely with a very important time in China's history. It is also important because it is missing much of the bias one way or another that characterized stuff that was written about Chiang Kai-shek during the cold war period. I don't know that it would be easy to follow for someone who is completely unfamiliar with 20th Century Chinese history. When you're reading this book it definitely helps to have some familiarity with the dramatis personae. That being said, it is a significant addition to the study of this period. And although it will probably not be sold openly on the mainland for a long time, it will definitely redefine the way this period is viewed, both by supporters and detractors of this most unusual figure in the history of modern China. Five stars without any hesitation.

Transistors represent the intermediate slage between vacuum tubes and modern serucconductors.

In 1938, a group of physicians from India traveled to China to assist the Eighth Route Army of the fledgling Chinese Communist Party in their war of resistance. It was Agnes Smedley's idea, actually. She suggested to Mao's general, Zhe De (spelled "Chu Teh" in the book) that he request the help of Nehru, particularly in the form of medical supplies and surgeons. The response was quick in coming, and this book is the story of that response.

First of all, the writer of this book is a doctor, not an author. This book is basically a transcription of his diary. So it is not always the smoothest reading. But that's OK. I don't mind, because when you are interested in the historical details, the records of a physician who was a stickler for detail are at least as important and valuable as a book written by a journalist, which could be more readable, but also possibly a little less accurate.

There are several very interesting insights in this book. These insights are possible because the medical mission from India was sent to Yanan, which was the headquarters of Mao and his cohorts during days after the Long March.

Dr. Basu records Mao's skepticism of Gandhi. Mao was very much opposed to non-violent resistance. He believed very firmly that it was completely unrealistic to talk about genuine revolution without violence. The Communists believed very strongly that the war against imperialism would require bloodshed. This, of course, necessitated extensive medical assistance, because the kind of violence the Communists believed to be necessary would deplete the ranks if wounded soldiers could not get fairly immediate medical attention.

Another interesting insight is Basu's observation of Zhe De's comments about democracy. It is very clear from this book, that Zhe De believed he was fighting for the purpose of helping to usher in a democratic system, which would stand as a glaring contrast to the quasi-fascist Guomindang, and the Empire of the Qing Dynasty which preceded it. One wonders how Zhe De would assess the democratic quality of the system ushered in by the hard-fought civil war he had such a large part in. What would he have said about the Cultural Revolution if he had felt completely free to comment?

In addition to these insights, the book is useful in helping one to appreciate what the day to day "grind" of life was like in the Yanan community. I have never been to Yanan, but I have stayed in the Yaodong (earth caves) in neighboring Shanxi Province. These villages tend to become very close because they are so isolated from the outside world.

Again, Basu is not an historian, but, notwithstanding the sometimes boring diary-like style, this book does give a useful insight which would probably not be possible without it. There have been several good books written which touch on what life was like in Yanan, and this book is more meaningful if read in the context of those. For example, this book contains nothing of the political infighting that went on in Yanan. During these days, Westerners (including the American military delegation) tended to be a bit overawed by the Communists. Joseph Stillwell himself once commented that he would almost rather fight for Zhe De than to be associated with Chiang Kai-shek, whom he despised. Basu's book is useful because, although it clearly gives the perspective of an outsider, it is not American. It was written by someone who is ideologically sympathetic to the Communist cause, and equally contemptuous of Western "imperialism."

This book will be very useful to you if you have any interest at all in the unique series of events which led to the formation of New China, and the demise of the Guomindang on the mainland.

Labels: History

Note: This book was first published on Amazon.
Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2009

I think this is the second book I have read by this author. Not positive, but I'm quite sure that one of the books on tape I went through back when I was a truck driver was written by this author.

He's good. The author makes the book. That may seem to be an obvious statement, but there are books that survive in spite of who wrote them. To be sure, the subject of this book is interesting, too. But the usefulness of this book in understanding Russian history is definitely enhanced by the thorough research of the author, combined with the readability of his writing.

Who is Alexander, and why is he important? Would he not have some great significance by mere virtue of being a Czar of Russia? Perhaps, but there is one specific thing that, I believe, sets him apart: He freed the serfs. For this reason, he has sometimes been referred to as the "Abraham Lincoln" of Russia, but let the comparison stop there. He was no Lincoln. He simply did not posses the greatness of character that Lincoln had. But the fact that he freed the serfs combined with the way he did it does make his story important, and perhaps helped to bring about his ultimate demise.

The serfs were given freedom and a little land, but not really enough of it. Their lives were still quite difficult. So there remained a fair amount of unrest among the peasant community. Alexander's reforms did not really bring in democracy, and even though he himself did want to give people more latitude, he allowed for repressive measures in order to control an increasingly restive population. So what can we say about 19th Century Russia? Was it just a crazy place that was destined to cause trouble for any leader, or were there certain elements of his reign that generated needless animosity? Read the book and see what you think. And when you do, let me know if you can figure out why he refused to leave the scene of his assassination after the first bomb (which did not hurt him) went off. If he had been a U.S. president guarded by Secret Service agents, he would have been immediately hustled away from the scene, and would have survived.

It's a fascinating story. But it leaves unanswered one question that always puzzles me when I read Russian history or literature: Do the Russian people survive in spite of autocratic leaders, or do they tend to adopt autocratic leadership because that's the only way they can survive?

If you're new to Russian history, this book will do as a starting point, although I wouldn't wait too long before you read Robert K. Massie's Peter the Great . Alexander was a contemporary of the great 19th Century Russian writers, so this book will also help you to understand the background for the works of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.

This is the true story of a doctor who came to China in the early twenties, and worked in Changhsa (Hunan Province) for almost thirty years during the first part of the 20th century. It is a story fraught with mystery and many unanswered questions.

When I write an account like this I strongly prefer to wait until I have all the facts before I start, and to keep conjecture to a minimum. But as I said, there are many as yet unanswered questions: Did he actually murder her, or did she try to make it look that way? His case was helped by the fact that she was the one who brought the knife to the encounter. Was he actually Jewish, and why did he suddenly decide to make that known? His mother was an illegitimate child, so it’s hard to prove anything. Maybe that’s a story she told him to deflect from her own uncertain past. But who knows? Maybe it was true. But if so, then why did he return from Palestine? Why didn’t he stay there?

Anyway, although questions remain, it is time for this story to be told.

His name was Karl Fink. Or at least it started out that way. He was to assume a couple other identities before he came to China. His medical practice began the city of Hamburg, after a brief stint as a military doctor in World War I (I think), but most of his medical career was spent in China, and much of it, I believe, was affiliated with an orphanage in Changsha.

He had been married very briefly after World War I, but divorced a year or two later. He did have a son from that marriage, but I don’t know what became of him. Later he had some sort of relationship with a patient that led to the drama that overshadowed so much of his life. She was trying to blackmail him, I guess, and came to his place with a dagger. There was a scuffle of some kind, and she ended up dead. Did she attack him? Did he grab the knife and stab her? Or did she try to manipulate him by threatening suicide? The most likely is that she attacked him and ended up getting the wrong end of the knife herself. We will probably never know just what happened, but she was dead and the doctor fled.

He ran. Changed his name and ran. He was eventually arrested and jailed, but he escaped. I don’t know how. He fled to Czechoslovakia, but eventually came back and presented himself to a charity organization saying that he wanted to go to China as a doctor. How well did they vet him? Did they ask any questions? They no doubt did, but apparently not the right ones. Like “why would such a promising young physician want to go to China?

He was sent to Hunan province. He first worked in a hospital in the city of Hongjiang, where he met and married one of the single woman missionaries.

I don’t know all the details, but there was a terrible fire in the town and his hospital was destroyed. The hospital was rebuilt, but he was eventually assigned to open a new hospital in Changsha, the capital city of Hunan. He actually lived in the house where Hudson Taylor had died, which building was eventually used as part of a new hospital.

The Sino-Japanese War began in 1937. The Chinese had a practice of burning the area they thought the Japanese were going to invade so there would be nothing left for them when they came. There was a false rumor that the Japanese were coming, so the Chinese started burning the area, but they did it in secret, so the local population was not warned and many people died. Lots of wooden houses—maybe 30 or 40 thousand people died. It is also reported that many local people who sought to put out the fires were shot by Chinese soldiers who wanted to “burn the ground” in front of the Japanese.

Chiang Kai-shek came to Changsha and held a court martial. The officers responsible were executed. As it turned out, the Japanese never came, so the whole burning campaign had been unnecessary.

In 1939 he returned to Germany for a furlough. He was arrested and imprisoned in Hamburg. Did he turn himself in? I don’t think so, because he and his wife had gone to Germany for a furlough back in 1934. They had been in Germany for about a year that time, and nothing had happened. Whatever the case, this time he was apprehended and brought to trial.

From the police report:

Dr. Fink is about 1.75 to 1.78 m tall, slender, close-cropped, dark hair, slightly thinned at the front of the forehead, elongated narrow face with sunken cheeks of yellowish brown color, dark eyes, piercing gaze, clean-shaven, early hint of dark blond moustache, somewhat curved nose (hooked nose).

In 1939, He was given a two year sentence for manslaughter.

Here’s where I have a question: Why manslaughter? I’m not a lawyer, but I do have a reasonable familiarity with the three basic categories. Manslaughter is when you did not intend to kill someone—weren’t even angry with them, but you do something unlawful that results in somebody dying.

Second degree murder is when you did not originally intend to kill someone, but you kill them in the heat of the moment.

First degree murder is intentional homicide.

It seems to me that if she killed herself in front of him to try to frame him, he was innocent, because he didn’t kill her. But if he grabbed the knife from her and then killed her, that would be second degree murder.

I do have sympathy for someone confronted with a crazed person and having to deal with this person alone. Many years ago I worked at Oregon State Hospital. Every once in awhile, one of the patients would flip out and become really crazy. The staff would then call every ward to see if there was an extra man on duty who could come and help. We would all take our glasses off and then come at this person calmly with seven or eight guys, lead them to an isolation room, and restrain them on a bed with belts. I can’t imagine what it would be like to confront someone like that alone, especially someone who had a knife and was threatening me with it. Still, I don’t see why he would have to stab her. Was he angry with her for trying to blackmail him? If so, that’s not manslaughter.

I don’t know. Reportedly, the court was influenced by many reports from China about his humanitarian work there. I don’t doubt that, because the doctor and his missionary wife were very well liked here in China—no question about that. But I still think that from a legal standpoint, the key factor was that she brought the knife, not him.

Whatever the case may be, he was given a suspended sentence and allowed to return to China in 1940.

World War II pretty much disabled the relationship between China and Germany and the Germans in Changsha were expelled from China. The doctor and his wife got around this by going to the city of Qingdao, which was in that part of China occupied by the Japanese. So they actually lived out World War II in China (1942-1947). This is the irony of war. While the whole world was falling apart, the doctor and his wife were living a life of peace, hanging out with other foreigners in Qingdao by the sea. If you’ve never been to Qingdao, it’s a really nice place, situated right on the coast, with a moderate climate. The doctor was quite a musician, I guess, so they would get together and have concerts and stuff, relatively untouched by the chaos everywhere else. Sorta like me hanging out in a COVID-free zone in the mountains of western China for the three years of COVID, while people were getting sick and dying in places to which foreigners who had been in China fled for “safety.” They should have stayed here.

The doctor and his wife returned to Changsha in 1947, but as you may know, if you’ve read your history, in 1949 the Communists took over, and the missionaries were kicked out of China. This was viewed as a disaster by mission organizations, but it was a blessing in disguise, because the “caretaker” missionaries were gone, so leadership had to emerge from within the Chinese church, and the result was exponential growth of Christianity.

They went to Germany from where the doctor, who had announced that he was actually a Jew, went to Palestine where he worked in Arab refugee camps. What’s up with that? Was this just some new identity that he pasted on himself? That was my first reaction, but upon reflection, I think he was probably just looking for something to do. He did not stay long. Having lived in China for 20 years, now, I can imagine that going from China to Palestine would have been quite an adjustment. After a year or so, he returned to Germany.

When the missionaries were kicked out of China, many of those who were nearing retirement just decided to remain in their home countries. But the younger ones weren’t ready to relinquish the calling they had given their lives to. The doctor was sixty years old by now, so I guess he could have retired, but he was not ready to quit yet. He seemed to be living as if he had one more life to save. So he presented himself to his old mission board and asked to be placed. One could bemoan the fact that he could not return to China, I guess, but in fact, China was a pretty chaotic place at this point in time, so for the doctor, his new assignment at the International Catholic Hospital in Shinjuku (the Manhattan of Tokyo) was really made to order, and it was to this hospital that a young missionary brought his wife in the spring of 1954.

She had hepatitis. As soon as he saw her, he told her she needed to go right to bed. His reaction was very different from that of the countryside doctor she had gone to up on the field, who thought her yellow skin looked perfectly normal.

The doctor told them to wait right there, and he went to arrange a bed for her. As soon as he left the room, the woman turned to her husband and said, “Let’s get out of here.” She wanted to go home.

Her husband said, “Nothing doing.”

They had their daughter with them, I guess, so the husband returned to the field with the little girl, leaving his wife in the care of the doctor. It wasn’t that night, but maybe the next night that the unthinkable happened: She went into labor. That wasn’t supposed to happen. She wasn’t due for another two months. But then things went from bad to worse. She started hemorrhaging, and they could not stop the bleeding. Nothing seemed to work.

As she lay dying in her hospital bed in Shinjuku, her one consuming thought was that she did not want to die alone. She was a nurse. She had seen it. They drag the dying person on a gurney down to the end of a darkened hallway with the other hopeless cases. Then they check the bodies once in a while to see which ones are already dead and ready to be sent to the morgue. That was before hospice.

Such were the thoughts that plagued her soul as the life was ebbing out of her body. Did she share her fears with the doctor? I am inclined to think so, because the doctor left to call her husband. I wasn’t privy to his conversation with the staff, but it was something on the order of, “Keep her comfortable; I need to get her husband on the phone. She’s not going to make it.”

He called her husband and told him that he had better get down there right away. That call was a “hail Mary” if there ever was one. Thre was no way he could get right down there. He had his daughter with him—not sure where the other child was—and he was several hundred miles away. It was completely unrealistic. I think the doctor just did it because she had wanted to have her husband with her when she died. Anyway, the doctor and her husband talked and decided to wait until the morning and reconnect. The husband went to bed, waiting to see what the morning would bring. The doctor went to work. He was not one to give up when there was a life to save.

I don't know what he did, but somehow he was able to get the bleeding stopped. Or maybe it stopped by itself. I don’t know. Nosebleeds stop by themselves, so maybe that’s what happened. Anyway, I don’t know what he did, but it finally worked. The baby was born at 4:30 in the morning, and at 5:30, her husband got a call, “You have a new baby boy, and the mother and baby are doing fine.”

Doing fine?? That was a stretch. She was still very sick. In her case, “doing fine” meant that she was going to live. As for the baby, he was very weak and heavily jaundiced, but alive. I guess “doing fine” meant that the doctor was betting that he would eventually pull through, and I am here alive to tell you, seventy years later, that he did.

Mom said, “You were so weak you couldn’t even cry. You just squeaked.”

Dad said, “You looked like a little Indian.”

In today’s woke America, some people might call that a racist statement. But Dad was a farm kid from North Dakota. He was just making an observation. A heavily jaundiced Norwegian-American baby would look like a little Indian, right? You gotta believe me, you guys—I really wasn’t trying to look like a little Indian. It was the furthest thing from my mind. Fortunately, there were no woke morons yelling, “CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!!” So I was allowed to heal in peace.

I never told my mother the doctor’s story. I wonder if she would have seen him differently. But differently from what? In all my conversations with my mother about my childbirth, she never said a word about her impressions of the doctor. Nothing good, nothing bad. I have no idea what she thought of him. Did she know his story? Perhaps. But I don’t know how she could have known. If she did, she never let on.

What kind of person was he, really? Well, you have to give him credit for persistence. Twice his hospital was destroyed by fire, but he kept going. On his seventy-fifth birthday, he was awarded Federal Cross of Merit by the German government. And of course he was well recommended by everyone who knew him. I met one of those people years ago. In 2006, on a visit to Tokyo, I went back to the hospital where I was born and met a nurse who had worked with him. From everything we can tell, he was well liked and respected wherever he worked. And yet something very terrible took place that he was somehow involved in.

So what do we conclude from this? Did he get away with murder? Or was he confronted with a situation that was too much for hm to handle? Maybe both. These are questions that must be asked, because this wasn’t just a “he said, she said.” This was not a made up crime. There was a dead body. This calls for accountability. But how do do that? It’s not easy.

The court decided that he was in some way responsible for her death. But again, she brought the knife. So I just don’t know. So many questions remain unanswered. But one thing I do know: He saved my life, and he saved my mother’s life, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Labels: Japan

Note: This book was originally published on Amazon:
Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2009

Robert Novak is known as the melancholic counter-balance to the more phlegmatic Rowland Evans. More recently, he has become known for his work on television. He helped to start the McLaughlin Group on public television, and started a program on CNN called, "The Capital Gang." But in future generations, he will be known for this book.

As a history buff, I often have to read books that are really not about history, but contain items of interest that you cannot find elsewhere. This book, in sharp contrast, is a treasure trove of historical information. I was born in Japan, but my parents were Americans, and I made my first trip to the United States in the spring of 1957, when I was three years old. In that same year, Robert Novak moved to Washington D.C. to work in the AP Washington bureau. So this book is a political history of the United States over the span of my lifetime. You can understand my interest.

I don't remember the election of 1956 ("Don't change the team in the middle of the stream."), because I was only two years old. But I remember 1960 well. I was in first grade. We had an election in class, and I voted for Nixon. I followed every election after that. I registered to vote when I was a senior in high school, and voted for the first time (officially) for Nixon the autumn after my graduation. Do I regret that vote? Not really, because I don't think McGovern was a serious alternative. But this book told me some things about Nixon that were not apparent to most people, and I'm not just talking about Watergate.

Ever wonder where all those government leaks come from? This book will tell you. Who was it that said, "The people don't know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot. Once Middle America--Catholic Middle America in particular--find this out, he's dead?" You wouldn't believe it if I told you. But Novak will tell you, because the individual in question is no longer living, so the need for confidentiality has expired. This book contains many of these fascinating tidbits, insights, and perspectives. Novak made a career (with Evans) of reporting exclusives, and this book is full of them.

The greatest strength of this book, though, is the refreshing contrast it offers to the ocean of Internet "journalists" who litter the Internet with their compulsive outpourings, which are either ill-informed rants, or shameless paraphrases of other people's work. Many of these folks are bloggers, of course, but you would be surprised how many of them actually make their living writing purely from what they read in the papers. I read an article recently by a guy who was bemoaning the decline of print newspapers. He said, "People think that newspapers can be replaced by the Internet, but if conventional newspapers disappear, where will we get the information we need to write Internet articles?" ??? Where does he think the people who write newspapers get their information? Somebody has to do the actual reporting.

Novak epitomizes Edison's well-worn statement that "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." He got his own information. He talked to people. He went there and found out what was really going on. This is old-fashioned journalism at its best. Novak seems to take it for granted, but he is a hard worker. Doing things this way he did was work. Lots of work. It was fun, but it was work. It was fascinating, and exciting and stimulating, but it was work. Lazy people cannot produce the kind of quality that Novak was known for.

So why should you read this book? This book would appeal to two kinds of people. I have already mentioned history. This book is a political history of the last half of the Twentieth Century. You will read the stories that were not told, and the reason they were not told. Case in point: Joe Kennedy bought Virginia for his son in the 1960 election by bribing the sheriffs who controlled the voting process. Why was the story kept under wraps for thirty years? Because the story would have come out just before the Democratic convention, and the top brass at the Wall Street Journal did not feel it was their place to influence the choice of the Democratic candidate. In fairness to the Journal, they said they could not break the story because their sources refused to sign affidavits. You decide for yourself why this corruption was hidden from the American people for a generation.

The other type of person who could really benefit from this book is a budding journalist. This book could also be subtitled, "Career Path for a Political Journalist." Novak describes every step of his career path, gives information about how he got the job in each case, his salary, and the equivalent value in 2007 dollars.

Novak made mistakes. His departure from the McLaughlin Group was a real loss. They needed him more than he needed them. Not sure what he could have done, but perhaps he should have apologized to McLaughlin. Novak is a man with strong convictions. Not hard to see how he would have trouble getting along with someone like McLaughlin, who is the furthest thing from an ideologue. But ideologues do not typically make good moderators, and McLaughlin is, hands down, the best moderator in the business. But while I think Novak left the McLaughlin Group too early, I also think he stayed with CNN too long. For those of you who don't remember what CNN was like before it became so trashy, I remember when CNN started. I watched the interview Ted Koppel did with Ted Turner on Nightline. Turner was talking about how modern (1980) commercial television had degraded, and he wanted to provide something wholesome for the American people. I was struck by this, and a bit sceptical, but you know, whatever you think of Turner, his network really did start out that way. In my opinion, Novak stayed until long after CNN had become a lost cause. Part of this was contractual, but I sometimes think I would have been inclined to leave television altogether, rather than stay with an outfit that had become so completely given to trivia. CNN has become the "soap opera" of network news.

Perhaps my negativity comes from the fact that I believe America is clearly a civilization in decline. To the extent that men like Evans and Novak did their part to live and work as men of principle and honor, and slow the insidious demoralization of society, we should thank them. And we should also express our thanks to their families, who had to bear with a work schedule that was very intense and demanding. We are all in their debt.

Note: This book was originally published on Amazon:
Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2002

This was, in many ways, a painful book to read. I was in elementary school at a school for missionary children in northern Japan when I read in my Weekly Reader that Nguyen Cao Ky had become the new prime minister of South Vietnam. I remember the news gave me a sense of hopefulness about the war, which we were kept informed of by the Far East Network (armed forces radio) and the Voice of America. I can also remember my feeling of confusion when I read that Theiu had replaced Ky as Vietnam's leader.

Without belaboring the point, I have long been frustrated by the American handling of the war, which, I believe developed out of our abdication in Korea. I don't want to spend time talking about that, because it is a tired and painful subject. Suffice it to say that this book confirmed my feelings, but added some new insight.

For example, this book adds some insight into the resentment that many Vietnamese nationals felt toward the French, whose colonialism was largely exploitive, and financed by the Americans in amounts that Everett Dirksen would call "Real Money." In addition to that, I did not know, until I read this book, that Westmoreland was fully informed of the North Vietnamese intention to stage a major invasion during Tet, but decided to keep this from the South Vietnamese army! This appalling mismanagement of the crisis produced a disastrous and completely unnecessary problem for Cao Ky, but it was a challenge that the South Vietnamese met and overcame. While Tet had a demoralizing effect on the American public, it was actually a victory for South Vietnam, and a major defeat for the North Vietnamese.

The book also addresses some more familiar themes, such as the legendary ineptitude of McNamara, but the most poignant event in this book is Nguyen Cao Ky's impulsive decision to abdicate leadership in favor of Thieu. Nobody (including Nguyen Cao Ky himself) knows why he did this. Perhaps it really was a selfless act of a patriot who had no interest in promoting himself, and was just trying to do what was best for his country. Or, perhaps, he had become bored with the monotony of leadership, and decided to abandon his responsibility, just as he discarded his wives, one after another, when he got tired of them. To his credit, Nguyen Cao Ky takes full responsibility for his fateful decision. And it would not be fair to say that he abandoned his country completely, because he was always ready to serve, and to lead when the chips were down. In that sense, we must give credit where credit is due, and call him a patriot. But this is small comfort for the painful realization that the war effort was doomed by his decision, although I am still not sure if I believe that it was more significant than the moral exhaustion of the American culture, which rendered the Americans all but impotent to save Vietnam.

Read this book. Nguyen Cao Ky is a very good storyteller, and a man of adventure who liked to live on the edge. You will almost certainly come away better informed about the first war the Americans lost. It is a sad story, but one which can have a certain measure of redeeming value if we are able to learn from our mistakes, and adapt to the very different place that east Asia has become.

Labels: Vietnam War

January 10th. Twenty years ago today I flew into Beijing from Los Angeles. The previous summer I had contacted the Oracle office in Singapore and asked them which universities in China they had an affiliation with. They said that they had an affiliation with all the software colleges. Up until they said that, I had not known that China even had software colleges.

China had seen the big IT sectors in Hyderabad and Bangalore where American software companies like Oracle and Microsoft had set up offices to do software engineering at a fraction of what it would cost them in Silicon Valley. China wanted to get in on some of that business, so they set up 35 software colleges to train sofware engineers who could compete in that market.

The timing couldn’t have been better. Up until that time, all I had seen by surfing the Internet was traditional university computer science departments. I don’t know anything about computer science, so I felt like a fish out of water just looking at those university web sites. But I had been teaching at a software college in Arizona for four years, and training online with Scholars.com for a year before that. So I had the kind of experience they were looking for in an environment where few people had experience as software trainers.

Beihang University was a top tier university in China. They did not accept any students who scored below the 98th percentile on the National Entrance Exam. So I was working with very bright people. All my anti-cheating measures I implemented were designed by my Chinese TAs, who didn't like cheating any more than I did. In addition, when I started at Beihang, I was using an online testing system from the University of Hawaii. One of my TAs proposed taking my material and building an in house testing system. At first I sort of brushed the idea aside. But later the University of Hawaii shut down that site, and all the tests I had created were destroyed. Fortunately Titan, my graduate TA, had taken the initiative to copy my tests. Most of them, anyway. I think I maybe had to redo a couple quizzes or something. It would have been much more horrible if he had not taken that initiative in spite of my dismissal. He was right and I was wrong.

1n 2009 I found out that Beihang University an upper age limit of 55 for foreign professors. Since I had come in January of 2004, my contract always ended in the middle of the year, which makes it hard to go directly to another job. But since I was already taking a class at a language school, I was able to get a six month visa from them, which took me to the summer. I then flew to San Francisco and got a one year tourist visa, so that I would not be forced to take the first job that came along. I left the foreign teacher’s dormitory and moved to a village in the western hills of Beijing.

Throughout that following year, I had ample opportunity to climb the liills and seek the face of God.

Note: This book review was first published on Amazon: Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2003

This is a book of fascinating contrasts and contradictions. Percy Chen was the son of the Chinese foreign minister during the period prior to the rise of Chiang Kai-shek. But Percy himself grew up in Trinidad, the son of overseas Chinese who left Guangdong Province during the time of the Taiping Rebellion. But not quite. His father married a Creole of basically French descent. According to Percy, Eugene Chen adored his wife, but then left her during what appears to have been a midlife crisis, and went to China to participate in the revolution. To be fair, Eugene Chen did not cease the support of his family, but he was almost never home, and his lifestyle had an obvious influence on Percy, who did much the same thing to his own family years later.

I mentioned contrasts and contradictions. Percy Chen is adamant in his contempt for Chiang Kai-shek, and his support for the Communists. But his personal lifestyle really reflected a highly westernized appetite for the "good life." He says at one point, "I had become a socialist when I was in Soviet Russia. That meant that I had lost my 'property-owning sense.'"

Baloney. True, Mr. Chen did cede his agricultural holdings in Trinidad over to his ex-wife (the one he had abandoned). But he tired of this "socialist" lifestyle very quickly, and went to Hong Kong to take up the life of a middle class (dare I say bourgeois) barrister just before the Communist takeover. So he never actually lived in the society whose system he claimed to admire. Several times throughout the book he refers to his "50 years in China." Yet in all this time he never learned to speak Chinese, and in fact, the time he actually spent in Mainland China amounted to a fraction of that 50. Linguistically handicapped? That doesn't work either. He lived in the Soviet Union for a few short years, and learned to speak Russian, in his words, "almost as well as I speak English."

Despite the many contradictions, I recommend this book for a couple of reasons. First, it is loaded with history. As mentioned, Percy Chen was the son of the Chinese foreign minister (who also spoke no Chinese), so he was personally acquainted with the inner workings of the revolutionary government. I know, it's a bit of a stretch to call it "government," because the civil instability existed in some form from three months after Sun Yat Sen became the first president of China, when he was forced to yield his position to Yuan Shikai, to the day that Mao Zedong stood on the steps of the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square and declared the new People's Republic. Yet, Percy Chen's relationship, in some way, to all sides of this transition, gave him a very unique perspective.

Combined with the historical value, are the travelogues filled with personal anecdotes. His description of the road trip to Moscow in 1927, when he was commissioned by his father to take Borodin home, is classic. At one point, the caravan actually abandoned Anna Louise Strong, giving her up for lost in the middle of the Gobi desert. Fortunately, she had headed in the direction they would be traveling, and they just happened to spot her after they had despaired of finding her and headed down the road five or six miles.

This book was published in 1979, and the last chapter of the book describes a trip that the author and his Russian wife took through China in 1977. Yet Chen makes no mention whatsoever of the Cultural Revolution, This seems to me to be an appalling omission, which strains the credibility of the book, and, if nothing else, gives one good reason to question Percy Chen's objectivity. But if I graded the book on its objectivity, I would probably not be recommending it. Perhaps its greatest value comes from the fact that it is essentially a personal story, and thus far more subjective than the author ever realizes.

But if I let myself get philosophical, I'm going to start sounding negative. Chen's philosophy is full of inconsistencies. Nevertheless, it is a book worth reading for its many observations, however one sided. If you promise me that your reading of this book will be balanced by exposure to other accounts of the period, then I have no problem recommending it, because it does contain a wealth of history about a time that was, in many ways, one of the most critical periods in the history of this great and changing country.

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Labels: Burma Road, Minguo Period