Kurzbeschreibung

Eine neuere Geschichte Chinas aus der Sicht derjenigen, die die Veränderungen und Umwälzungen der letzten 100 Jahre miterlebt haben. Xinran bereiste das Land und hat die Menschen befragt. This magnificent and groundbreaking work of oral history gives voice to a forgotten generation and reveals the secret history of 20th-century China.

Beschreibung

China Witness is the personal testimony of a generation whose stories have not yet been told. Here the grandparents and great-grandparents of today sum up in their own words - for the first and perhaps the last time - the vast changes that have overtaken China's people over a century. The book is at once a journey by the author through time and place, and a memorial to those who have lived through war and civil war, persecution, invasion, revolution, famine, modernization, Westernization - and have survived into the 21st century. We meet everyday heroes, now in their seventies, eighties and nineties, from across this vast country - a herb woman at a market, retired teachers, a legendary 'double-gun woman', Red Guards, oil pioneers, an acrobat, a female general, a lantern maker, taxi drivers, and more- those whose voices, as Xinran says, 'will help our future understand our past'.

Rezension

"Right here we see the red lines that many Chinese still draw for themselves in public discourse, or even privately, the boundaries they dare not cross even today. No other style of storytelling could have exhibited them with more clarity or greater rawness" The Times

Klappentext

Includes grandparents and great-grandparents who sum up in their own words the vast changes that have overtaken China's people over a century. This book is also at once a journey by the author through time and place, and a memorial to those who have lived through war and civil war, persecution, invasion, revolution, famine, and, Westernization.