Word: tuchman
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...Tuchman was also disturbed by the inflexibility of her itinerary, but was reassured when she was allowed to wander alone in Yenan, and upon entering a schoolhouse, discovered that the conditions and friendliness were no different than in scheduled schools...
...fluency in the language and relaxation of travel restrictions would not alter the situation greatly. Tuchman finds herself listening with American ears, seeing through American eyes, and even smelling with an American nose. In concluding a description of harsh rural reality, she suddenly moves from the size of garden plots to a description of a "privy"--just one more victim of the American Bathroom Syndrome. She defines deficiencies in terms of American excesses. She even goes so far as to judge the inflections of Chinese music, a dangerous task when crossing cultural lines...
Most awkward for the old China hand are those situations which defy explanation, those statements that simply do not make sense. Tuchman encountered several. Officials denied facts of history, made senseless decisions, and gave seemingly absurd rationales. Tuchman mused, "One never knows...whether it is ignorance, or befuddled Marxist orthodoxy, or some kind of reverse oriental version of reality." She was standing at the edge of a yawning cultural...
...greatest difference between Chinese today and the rest of the world is that the Chinese take their revolution seriously. Astonished, Tuchman reports the lengths to which Mao has gone in creating perpetual revolution and the degree to which the people actually live it. Tempered by her concern for an uninformed and misinformed public, she is otherwise enthusiastic about the psychic and material benefits that the Chinese have begun to enjoy since the years of Stilwell...
...effectively debunks much of the propaganda credited with China's progress. Fertilizer, after all, has done more to raise food production than ML&M, and Tuchman notes that not even Mao has thought of a Thought that has been able to stop spitting in the streets. Perhaps because the ideology is so pervasive, she enjoys poking fun at it and pointing out the inconsistencies. In short, she fails to take the revolution seriously...