Word: bernsteins
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...much happier and more productive. Replied Deng politely: "He lied." Such rosy reports have been as predictable as the years of the Monkey, Pig and Goat, but from time to time, a Dengian antidote has been offered. Fox Butterfield's China: Alive in the Bitter Sea and Richard Bernstein's From the Center of the Earth supply in valuable truths to counter the diseases that afflict so many tourists: romanticism and naivet...
Through a series of mercilessly detailed case histories, the authors confirm that the Cultural Revolution was a nightmare of fanaticism. According to Bernstein, TIME'S first correspondent in the People's Republic, "sheer terror was the common every day experience of millions of people...
...only in the past few years, Bernstein writes, that "the cacophony of real life became audible above the droning, monotonous Muzak of the regime." Both authors discovered a handful of brave Chinese willing to narrate the horror stories of their lives: scientists and scholars sent to "reform through labor" camps for dozens of years; women tortured and imprisoned for sleeping with their lovers; nameless men punished for their grandfathers' crimes; families murdered for a mere suspicion of disloyalty...
...that affects their lives. In China, one is guilty until proved innocent, and once accused, the only way to be absolved is to confess. As Butterfield notes, there is no word for privacy in the Chinese language, and there is no room for privacy in Chinese society. China, agrees Bernstein, is a true police state, a society that has "prohibited without providing...
China: Alive in the Bitter Sea and From the Center of the Earth invite comparison to Chinese art works. In that case, Butterfield's book is an enormous scroll, a teeming, informative landscape of scurrying figures. Bernstein paints with a more expressive, delicate brush. His art is philosophical and impressionistic, elegant and in some ways more moving. Where Butterfield deals mostly with urban China, Bernstein attempts to plumb the interior hinterland, the very heart of China. Together, these complementary volumes reveal the China of dust and sweat-the China of experience rather than imagination. They create a portrait...