Solaris
Party Escort Bot
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2005
- Messages
- 10,318
- Reaction score
- 4
So a messed up sleeping pattern meant a had a long, wakeful night ahead of me. Combined with the internet being down I had little to do but sink me teeth into the massive 600 page hardback I had in my room.
The book is about 3 generations of women, grandmother, mother and the author and their lives in china from the turn of the 20th century to the 1980's.
The book really shocked me, it was incredible to see the good intentioned servants of communism be consumed by the 'cultural revolution' Mao had unleashed. All their dreams and hopes of removing Chinas poverty and cultural backwardness turn into a heart breaking realisation of the monster their communist state has turned into.
What really stuck out to me is how how easily China under Mao resembled Fascism, it was a brutal totalitarian state which proudly proclaimed ignorance and senseless violence. The father of the author, who was a leading communist revolutionary eventually comes to the realisation that everything Mao was doing had nothing to do with dreams of equality or a utopia, but instead merely preserving and consolidating power and unleashing all Mao's terrifying whims that absolute power allowed him to unleash.
One of Mao's absurd dictates was that all grass and flowers should be removed becuase they were 'bourgeoisie decadence' and so school children spent weeks pulling the grass out of their playing fills.
Eventually, when Mao dies, China liberalises shockingly fast and the author points out how absurd it was that one man could run the country into ruin like that and kill 30 or so million people.
So all in all, a fantastic book 10/10 and **** you to the communist party of China.
The book is about 3 generations of women, grandmother, mother and the author and their lives in china from the turn of the 20th century to the 1980's.
The book really shocked me, it was incredible to see the good intentioned servants of communism be consumed by the 'cultural revolution' Mao had unleashed. All their dreams and hopes of removing Chinas poverty and cultural backwardness turn into a heart breaking realisation of the monster their communist state has turned into.
What really stuck out to me is how how easily China under Mao resembled Fascism, it was a brutal totalitarian state which proudly proclaimed ignorance and senseless violence. The father of the author, who was a leading communist revolutionary eventually comes to the realisation that everything Mao was doing had nothing to do with dreams of equality or a utopia, but instead merely preserving and consolidating power and unleashing all Mao's terrifying whims that absolute power allowed him to unleash.
One of Mao's absurd dictates was that all grass and flowers should be removed becuase they were 'bourgeoisie decadence' and so school children spent weeks pulling the grass out of their playing fills.
Eventually, when Mao dies, China liberalises shockingly fast and the author points out how absurd it was that one man could run the country into ruin like that and kill 30 or so million people.
So all in all, a fantastic book 10/10 and **** you to the communist party of China.
